Laundry Revisited

I'm less concerned about all the tedious quirks of doing laundry in Switzerland than I was a year ago. I still think that washing in warm water is kind of stupid, but I have embraced the fact that machines here generally don't let me go any cooler than 30 degrees and I just don't care any more. Some cantons are also apparently a squillion times more sensible than Aargau in that the power of our washing machine doesn't seem to go off at lunchtime, but still, doing laundry in this country is a million times more annoying than it needs to be.

Our new apartment is in a building with about 5 other flats, and we have one washing machine between the lot of us. There is no roster, it's all done on a "whatever" kind of basis, where if you turn up and the machine is being used, it's not your turn. This system suits my non-orderly approach to housework. What doesn't suit me is the fact that we have to pay with coins to use our machine. To do one load, you need six 20 frankincent* coins, but for some idiotic reason the machine only takes 5 at a time. So you put 5 in, then 55 minutes later you zip back up the 2 floors, put in another 20, and then 11 minutes later it's finished (although only if you're lucky, I have just discovered. If you're not lucky, you open the washing machine door, slop dirty water all over your sunburnt feet, then have to run back down two flights of stairs, get another 20c piece, run back up two flights of stairs and hope that that will be enough). Which is high-maintenance laundry, in my opinion.

After the fun of washing, there is also the annoyance of drying. In Aarau, as well as driers we had these excellent drying rooms where there was always space on the lines and everything dried in a few hours. Here there is no drier (which is fine because I hate driers) and very little hanging space, all of it in a room not conducive to things becoming dry very quickly**.



*no, obviously they're not really called frankincents, but that is what I like to call them. Although I have just discovered that I don't enjoy it nearly as much when I have to write it down because the spelling is ridiculous. It really should be "francincents", I suppose, as in franc cents, but you would no doubt read that all wrong, and it's supposed to sound like "frankincense" the well known tree residue/gift for babies. It's just a happy coincidence that it also has a hint of "frankenstein" about it
** a bummer when you only have one sheet and you therefore need to do your laundry at the crack of dawn in order for the sheet to dry in time for you to go to bed at night. Actually, we have 3 sheets now, but still the doona covers need to dry before one can successfully go to sleep again. Reto is officially in charge of all bedding/towelling type laundry here (since his schedule is sufficiently flexible that no one cares when he turns up for work), so it shouldn't annoy me, but I always have to nag him or else he would never get around to cleaning anything. And on that note, see also "washing up".