My laundry is caught up ; )

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-24-2003
My laundry is caught up ; )
5
Fri, 10-27-2006 - 6:28am

I live in Bucharest Romania and have 4 kids. Most people here have a wahsing machine but no dryers. Maybe because they have been dong it that way for years, dryers are not cheap and most peole don't want to pay the extra electricity cost to run a dryer...I don't know but dryers are very rare. 4 kids are also very rare...lol

I could manage with no dryer in the summer but the weather has changed. Not too cold but very humid. So here is the old laundry scedule;

1) Wash 1 load (1hour short cycle) The normal cycle is 2hours long...what :/ Yes they are concerned about electricity but he clothes wash for 2 HOURS on 220v Also I have a brand new large capactiy washer but nothing like my "american washer" (sigh missing home)

2)Take out clothes and hang them to dry. There was some unexplainable weather thing here...regardless of the weather when I hung out the clothes it would start to rain the minute they were completely dry. This drying process could take anywhere from 1 day to 4 DAYS. I have room to bring the drying rack inside if it rained but there was still too much humidity in the air even with the clothes inside. Fumbling with a folding drying rack...trying to get it in after it started raining I am sure was a real comical sight.

3) Remove stiff wrinkled clothes and iron them before putting them away....with four kids...NOT I would only iron the clothes that really needed it so we all wore stiff wrinkly clothes for a while. The towels were the worst.

So a load of laundry that would take 2 hours wash-dry-fold-put away took 5 days. I could do 3-4 at a time but that meant hanging clothes at 11:00 pm at night and hoping for no rain. Every day I would remove the clothes that were dry and hang the wet clothes with the almost dry clothes.

I have also decided that my kids have way too many clothes. People here have 5 outfits and it looks like they just put on whatever is clean and dry when they wake up. With no concern if it matches. I am not being critical believe me it is way too much work just getting it clean.

I have also decided that I am not going to change. My kids have way too many clothes and way too many toys that we payed to ship here. dh's emp. didn't pay to ship anything. I guess I like it that way. It makes me feel good to open the closet and see nice clean clothes and a toy room full of toys. It is like healing for my "inner child". DH and I both come for large families and we never had nice clothes or "stuff". Do you gals find yourself doing the same thing with your kiddos. Buying the stuff you really wanted when you were a kid.

I have been doing the "I have a new dryer dance for a week.

Last night I stayed up and watched a movie after everybody was in bed and folded all the clean, soft, tumbled dry laundry and put it all away so now I can just look in the closet when I need a "fix'.

Debra

 

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-12-2006
Fri, 10-27-2006 - 8:22am
good for you on the dryer, they were unheard of in greece till like this year. Now they are affordable but, they run on electricity. I think a lot of people are going to buy them because of where they live, because you can hang clothes here, pretty much year round, and we have a huge roof terrace, so we are not getting a dryer. But, if i had 4 kids we would have gotten one even for like the month it is kind of cold here.
Otherwise, i will tell you a reason why the washers take so long, they heat the water. We just got a washer that has two nozels, that takes hot and cold, from our solar heater, and our boiler in the winter, so we are probably like 3 people although we have sun year round and all people pretty much have a solar water heater, in all of greece that have considered and did this because my hubby is an engineer type, and always looking towards efficiency.
anyway, hang in there it is the same here with one child being the norm.
arie
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2004
Fri, 10-27-2006 - 9:58am
I am glad you got it done.
Must be hard not to have a dryer, that would just kill me.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-17-2005
Fri, 10-27-2006 - 12:20pm
Wow, what a pain!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-14-2005
Fri, 10-27-2006 - 3:36pm
WOW Debra!!!! I can't imagine taking 4 days to get 1 load of laundry taken care of. I bet you are loving life right now LOL. I guess it's so easy to take things for granted... then it hits us like a ton of bricks when we have to go without :o)
So what are you going to do with yourself now that you have so much extra time? lol

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-24-2003
Sun, 10-29-2006 - 1:00pm

WOW I even have an ansewer to what I am going to do with all the extra time...as if there was any extra time.lol

We also have a new central heater. We have a hot water heater that heats the water for the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. We also have a "central" this hot water heater heats the water for the upstairs bathroom and the radiators throughout the house. The central was working when we moved in but within 48 hours it started shooting flames out the back of the unit. It is a gas appliance so we immediatly called the gas company and they secured the gas lines and turned everything off and told us the unit was faulty. That was 4 months ago. Last month I FINALLY had a repairman come in and they said it could not be fixed. We negotiated with the landlord for 1 month and he finally agreed to pay for it. He thought it was an upgrade and he needed "his guy" to verify it was not safe to fix the original unit.

So OMG you cannot believe all the work it took but we finally have a central that works....yeah....So I can now take a long hot bath in the garden tub that is upstairs. It has a place for candles and a glass of wine. I can also turn on the radiator so I don't have to freeze getting out of the bath. Oh what luxury.

We have been here since March and finally things are starting to come together so now we are really feeling comfortable here.

Debra

 

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