Thursday, May 10, 2012

Adventures in Laundry

This is one of those stories that will be funny in a few weeks, but for now it is just tragic. Because for now, I’m freezing and I’m jetlagged and I’m damp and I’m apparently completely incompetent. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do my laundry in Scotland. It started with the washing machine, which has three places to put various items but rather than labeling each slot by function (ex. Fabric softener), instead has symbols that give little indication to their purpose.

And then the detergent is in powder form, which I've never used before. I scoured that box for directions, but found none other than a picture of a measuring cup, which appears to hold water.

After taking my best educated guess on how to proceed, I put in the detergent, chose my settings, and pressed start. Nothing happened. I pressed start again. Nada. Five minutes later the machine started beeping away in a tone that can only be translated as yelling “What are you doing, you stupid American?”. Finally I got it to start, though if you asked me to replicate the action, I’m not sure that I could. After the cycle was over, the machine yelled again that it was time to put the clothes in the dryer.

The dryer which is outside in the shed. Outside where it’s pouring rain and 45 degrees. But I figure, when in Scotland, do as the Scots do, and since the Scots seem to widely ignore the rain I loaded my wet clothes into a grocery bag and headed out. I stood in the rain for a few minutes while trying to unlock the shed with every key on the keychain.
When I finally got inside, I loaded my clothes in, fixed all my settings, and then realized I didn’t know how to start the thing. I stared at that machine until my fingers nearly froze off and could not figure it out. Seriously, either this dryer didn’t have a start button or I am the stupidest person alive.

So in a frustrated temper tantrum I started yanking my clothes out of the dryer and in my haste dropped half of them on the ground. On the ground which was covered in freshly mowed grass. Freshly mowed grass which then stuck to all of my wet clothes, which basically deemed the entire experiment a gigantic waste of time and energy.
I salvaged a few items that didn’t fall on the floor and I am now doing as several of the Scots do and hanging them out to dry. Except that it’s raining outside, so I’m actually hanging them in.

I’m turning out to be a really pathetic housewife.  I feel like I’ve been pretty strong throughout this whole ordeal, but I’m ashamed to admit that when I couldn’t figure out that dryer, I felt the sting of tears filling my eyes. Of course it wasn’t just the laundry that had me upset. I am overstimulated with new experiences. Every day, I am learning an entirely new way of doing daily tasks and sometimes it’s just exhausting, especially when I fail to learn quickly and end up feeling incompetent. And of course the fact that I’m jetlagged and freezing doesn’t help much with my frustration either.
Update: when Jonathan got home, he too could not figure out how to start the dryer. However, it took him about 60 seconds to realize there was no power at all in the shed, which led him to follow the extension cord from the dryer to the power source which was inside the house, in the kitchen.
Once he flipped the switch, the dryer came right on.

It made me feel a bit better about my intelligence because I know I never would have figured that out in a hundred years. That’s why I married an engineer, which was really pretty smart of me, dontcha think?

8 comments:

  1. I completely understand your frustration with trying to do laundry! I remember when I first trying vainly to get some meaning from the symbols when I first moved to Switzerland. Of course in a country with 4 official languages (none of which are English) it's easier to have some symbol which everyone learns.

    Luckily for you though, if you can find a manual you should be able to find out what the symbols mean. If you don't have one, try looking online, you can usually find appliance manuals on the manufacturer's website.

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    1. Well that makes me feel a little better:-) I admit that I was googling user manuals from the manufacturer. Now that you mention it, it makes total sense that European appliances would use symbols rather than a language to explain the process. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually:-)Thanks for your help!

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  2. if you haven't figured out the three symbols on the picture yet, I is for prewash, II is for main wash and the flower is for fabric softener :)

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    1. Well I guess my educated guess was wrong this time, because I totally thought the flower was for the main wash:-) Thanks for solving the mystery for me. Hopefully my second load of laundry in Scotland won't be such a disaster!

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  3. Easy mistake :) Good luck with the next load. Oh, and by the way; we use these really easy liquid detergent tablets. You just put them in with the clothes, saves the hazzel of trying to figure out how much powder to put in. Here is a link to one of them; they sell it in grocery stores.

    http://www.fairynonbio.co.uk/liquitabs.html

    I really recommend them- so easy :)

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    1. Thanks for the tip. I tried them out and they are much much easier (and they also smell really good:-)

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  4. You are amazing! Re-learning the simplest every day thins is HARD. Some people say keep calm and carry on... I say throw a fit, have a good cry, and THEN keep calm and carry on :) XOXO

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  5. "You Rock" for figuring it all out and keeping sane through it all. I SOOOO understand. I too, am from America. My husband is studying in St. Andrews, Scotland. After being here not 24 hours, my son who is 4 vomits all over and I have to wash our clothes. I did not even have detergent. Went to the store and bought that. It took me one whole hour to figure out how to use our washing machine because it had neither symbols or words directing me to which slot of three were for what. I could not look it up on the internet, because we did not have the internet at the house. I finally searched the whole house to find the manual for the machine. One hour of wasted time. AND top of that, we have NO DRYER. Clear skies, so I hung the clothes. Almost dry, a storm cloud came out of NOWHERE and rained all over our clothes. And I tried to pull them off the line. By the time I was done, it had stopped raining. I put them back up for it to rain on them an hour later. So all this to say: I FEEL YOUR PAIN!!!!

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