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Mari, the Happy Wanderer's avatar

I have lived in Europe for nine years now, and I endorse every word of this marvelous essay. It’s all so familiar--the scolding about Americans’ supposedly greedy desire to wash our clothes (at least now I know why the trams in Prague get stinky in the summer); the dryer cycle that takes, I kid you not, three hours and I STILL have to lay cotton items over the radiator; the washer so tiny I have to run eight loads a week for just me and my husband (and I am not a germaphobe and wear clothes a couple of times before washing them); and, when I am visiting the US and do laundry on American machines, the immense vista of time that opens up before me when I’m done with laundry already at 10:30am.

And also, yes, Europeans iron everything because of their inadequate dryers. Do they not get that irons use MORE energy than dryers, not less?! Smdh!

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Scheidler's avatar

Many years ago, I asked my great-grandmother, who was born in 1886 and had five children on a hobby farm (she was way ahead of her time), what the most amazing invention in her lifetime was. Polio vaccine? No. Automobile? No. Jet liners? Space travel? Better bras? Dental care with novacaine? No. Her answer: the washing machine. Don't mess around with progress, my friend.

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