You're kidding?! I'm HUGE!!!!

So you hear the stories, urban legends etc. about kids dying in home appliances. I could never imagine how it could be possible. Usually dryer is missing from European households since, we all can hang our clothes, it uses up some space, it takes longer time to dry but it doesn't use energy. But washing machines are there in many households. And most of us has a 3.5-4.5kg to 6kg big one. And it's always easy to fill them up regardless the size. The weekly laundry takes more than one load even if you pack the washing machine full. Like, when I changed the bedsheets my wife was always arguing with me, that even I fold them so they need less space in the washer, it's too much for the washing machine, and I should wash them in two loads because they're smelly. Well my nose it not that sophisticated after 20 years of allergy treatment, which comes really handy around smelly objects (like on the bus no. 7 in Budapest).


So after all this I couldn't imagine how kids could play hide and seek, and one of them ending up in the washer or dryer, and then someone switches on the machine and that leads to a serious accident... But now I understand. In the apartment where we used to live until August there was a combined washer-dryer (washer down, dryer up, combined together) in the unit. In the new place there was no such thing so we ended up buying our own; it's not an apartment complex, so there's no coin-laundry neither. We went to a Sears Outlet, and from $900 we got both the washer and dryer, accessories to hook up, delivered, and installed. In the shop they didn't seem huge, but they are indeed. I realized the first time I used them. A weekly laundry didn't fill up half of the belly of these beasts! The dryer accepts 2 loads from the washer. And they're super quite. We do have a laundry room, but even with the door open, I cannot her nor the washer and dryer.

The other crazy thing is that it is hard to find a washer that has a drum and not a pole in the middle torturing the clothes. The mix-dial based washers extinct in the 80's for me. Even my grandmas bought new automatic washers. But here people are still using them and it's quite popular even though their price compares to the modern ones... They're automatic, but for instance when it starts to rinse, you have to be there to pour the fabric softener in..