When in Rome, WASH as the Romans Do

Any regular visitors to this site will know that much of my writing is dedicated to American influences in Italy. Many of of them, like McDonalds for example, are not positive ones.

Today I got to thinking that not all things American are evil. Especially when it comes to the matter of washing machines. After moving to Italy, it didn't take long for me to adapt to the local methods of cleaning house and doing laundry. Though I will never measure up to the Italian queens of clean, I do my washing in a 5 kg capacity washer similar to the one featured below that takes about 2 hours to do an average wash cycle.

Once the garments are clean, they get hung to dry. In warm weather, my 2x4 patch of balcony is transformed into a laundry hub. In cold weather, the drying rack gets positioned inside the house near one of the radiators so the items will dry in 2 days or so. How does a family of 5 manage with this system you may ask? Not easy, but it is a way of life. Not the highlight of living life in Italy, but a small price to pay for living in one of the most amazing places in the world. After all, it could be worse, MUCH worse.

Like doing laundry by hand.

Or in this mini lavatrice: capacity for 2 socks and half a blouse.

Today, as I fired up old faithful for the daily wash cycle (or 3), something wasn't right. Water started leaking out the bottom, and then after two minutes or so the power blew out in the whole house. Oh-oh..a blown fuse. I reset the fuse box, then tried to restart the machine. Nothing. Morto.

While the Italian thing to do would be to call a repair man to come and fix it, in my mind I was already doing a sign of the cross over old faithful and thinking about what would be my defunct machine's giant American replacement.

At the shopping mall over the past few years, I have noticed an influx of large American style washing machines starting to make their way into the Italian market. There is one with more than double the capacity of mine, I can't wait to go out and buy it (and worry about how to fit it in my bathroom later)!

The Hoover 10Kg Mothership washer will soon be mine!