There's also something genuinely fascinating about Americans not realising that you don't need that stuff anyway.
I see them like "Europe is backwards because they don't have A/C" but the average temperature where I live is like 10°C lol
I see them like “Europe is backwards because they don’t have A/C” but the average temperature where I live is like 10°C lol
Not for long lol
I mean most of Europe is like 10 degrees further north then most of the us
Whoever says that is probably from the South. There are a lot of places within the US without A/C, even places that have very hot summers.
It's actually kind of crazy how common it is for Midwest or northeast places to not have AC. Like the hot times are usually only a few weeks, but still hot and humid weather fucking sucks without AC.
Our AC was down for a.bit earlier this year and it's amazing how quickly you can adjust. Like the first day or two sucks but you get accustomed.
Who needs AC anyway
Hi, I do. I get migraines and high temperatures are one of the biggest things that can make them more frequent (at least in my case). If it gets above 24-25 C it becomes significantly more likely I'll get a crippling headache, so I have to use AC to assure that it doesn't in fact get above 24-25 C.
17ºC and I'm sweating like I just got through a 24-hour :panting: :bonk: marathon.
I am 75% convinced of my conspiracy theory that tumbledryers were invented by clothing companies in order to increase wear on clothes.
They legitimately do wear the fuck out of you clothes that's for sure
Damn just buy another shirt so you can wait for your other clothes to dry lol
Who wants until all their clothes are dirty to wash them anyway?
Apparently Europe doesn't have tumble dryers or something :shrug-outta-hecks:
But... we do
Did this guy see a painting of 18th century peasant life and think it was a photo from somebody's instagram
I once had a US dude confidently explain to me (an European) that "they don't have AC or elevators" in Europe.
I will say it is constantly told to me (an American in very hot Texas) that while it may not get as hot, summers are worse across the pond because AC is not as widespread. At least that's what Britons say. Is that not the case in much of continental Europe? Does the answer change significantly with latitude?
When I visited my family in Germany we stayed in a house that didn't have A/C, so I would believe that it's less common overall. We also went to a lot of places with still-standing medieval architecture while we were there and none of those old buildings had A/C either.
Fancy Europe even has elevators to the first floor. You won't see that in america.
Idk about the rest of Europe but in Greece yeah we don't really have them. Like, you can buy them, I just never had them and neither have I noticed people who had them, I'm sure some do. But is it really important? Like, you can just have a clothe line or one of these stretcher like things, I don't know what they are called in English. I never felt like it was a problem lol
I never had one for a long while, but we got a cheap one because hanging up and drying and ironing 5+ people's washing is exhausting. But it uses too much electricity, which is expensive, so we don't even use it anymore.
Some dryers have a function to keep the clothes warm by spinning the thing up every 30 minutes for like 30 seconds until you take the clothes out so there's pretty much no wrinkles. It's called iron dry or cupboard dry or something.
I mean wrinkles don't look nice when you leave the house and dress up fancy. But I usually hang up my clothes in the bathroom while I shower, so the stream from the shower removes most of the wrinkles because I'm lazy lol.
I mean wrinkles don’t look nice when you leave the house and dress up fancy
I have 2 solutions to that:
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Not dressing up fancy
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Not leaving the house
Covid quarantines do be like that....
:deeper-sadness: :shrek-pixel-despair:
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Pretty crucial here there's maybe two weeks worth of says per year that leaving your clothes out wouldn't make them worse.
The only reason why it may not work is if it rains, which, I guess is an issue if it rains a lot lol
The cold is also a thing, your wet clothes freezing on the line doesn't do much, it also get super humid when it gets hot so your clothes will still be damp a you really don't want to fold up damp clothes that have been sitting outside and put them in a drawer
Even if the clothes freeze they will still dry when the sun hits them in general. People still use them in very cold climates.
Okay, I'll just leave them out for a week until the sun hopefully emerges for an hour.
If there is no sun, you can smack them with something so that the ice falls off. That's the trick, if it freezes it's actually good, because the ice will either evaporate, or if for some reason it doesn't you can smack your clothes with something so that it falls off.
If they are damp then I guess you have to iron them...
Or I can put it in the machine directly next to my washer and turn a dial and press a button.
Which you can only do if you are willing to spend the money to purhase said machine, and are willing to pay the electricity bill that comes with running it lol
No I'm serious, like, do you hang it up inside so it doesn't get rained or snowed on?
Oh, if it rains/snows then yeah you hang them inside on these typically, and you put something underneath so that they don't drip on the floor, or maybe you put them on the radiator or something like that. But if it's just cold and it's not raining then they still dry fine, it may just take a longer time. Most modern washers have a mode where they will partially dry them for you so you can hang them without them dripping on your floor.
EU dude without a tumble drier here: we indeed hang them up inside on these contraptions (basically takes a day and a half here to get dry, shorter if you're in regions with less humidity). Larger items - such as bedsheets - are usually hung up on balconies instead (with many clothespins to secure them). During bad weather I hang the later on random doorways in the house.
I hadn't been aware of ventless dryers.
Is the US the only country with vented dryers? I'm assuming they're also popular in the rest of NA, since it seems like it's a space thing?
Dries hotter and faster (clothes come out warm and toasty, although apparently that's actually not good for them) and dries larger loads.
Downsides are that it requires more space and is less energy efficient because instead of repeatedly recycling an internal supply of hot air, each load is washed with air pulled from the space around the dryer which is probably air conditioned and therefore needs more power to get hot enough.
In the US at least, vented ones are also significantly cheaper to acquire, but that might be an economy of scale thing.
Dish washers are another scam thing every American has. They basically wash all their dishes by hand, then wash them again in the machine.
Nah, they are good, and use less electricity and water than hand washing. A lot of people use the sink method thinking they're being green, but it's the opposite.
Most dishwashers get heavy food off plates now, but the majority of dishes don't even have that, and if you took away my dishwasher I would kill you.
I just got a dishwasher again after not having one in my places for the last.... 8 years?
It's great.
Apparently, dishwashers beat usual methods of handwashing even when the environmental production cost of the dishwasher is taken into account (though that estimate doesn't seem to include the cost of transporting the appliance, mind you).
The same study suggests one method of manual washing that beats dishwashers: the two basins methods (you fill one sink, plugged, with hot water, scrub the dishes inside that sink without running water, move the scrubbed dishes to a second plugged sink filled with cold water to rinse them).
Finally, that study bases its estimates on the U.S. national average electrical grid carbon intensity, and assumes water is heated in the home through natural gas; and most of the energy consumed is for water heating. So if you're living in, say, France (where 90% of your energy comes from low-carbon sources such as nuclear or hydro-electric dams), and your water heater is electric, the results might well be different.
Modern dishwashers don't need a pre rinse though. Just clean the filter after every few washes, takes like 5 minutes. My dishwasher has saved me a ton on the water bill and paid itself back many times. Not American btw.
Mine does at the bottom. It's like a little cylinder basket shaped thing
That's because most Americans just don't fill the soap slot. So their dishwasher doesn't work properly, which they assume is because they are supposed to be like that. If you actually fill the soap slot like you are supposed to, you can leave crusty old stuff on your dishes and it will still come off most of the time.
What do you mean? They just fill the dishwasher with dishes, and turn it on? No soap?
They usually just toss in a detergent packet, no soap or rinse aid.
Man I'm glad I have a legacy but wish it was for something else
They basically wash all their dishes by hand, then wash them again in the machine.
Mostly about the reflexive need to super-sanitize everything. It's only really useful for glassware.
You really shouldn't need to prerinse, this video is a pretty good explanation of while they can suck.
But I have a tumble dryer in the basement? :thonk:
It's a condenser rather than a vented(:sus:) dryer though, is that the critical difference?
Those nasty Europeans also don't have machines that make leaves fall from trees in the fall.
We do have machines that shake trees. Olive trees, and it's to make the olives fall, but some leaves fall as well
https://youtu.be/dRLvhA2S-Js
Of course you can get them, you just don't really need them.. so most people don't
you put them on a Line in the Wind and Sun ... Way better method ..
then you use the dryer ( but Dryer is Iggy , all the old dry particles from all the clothes , we have like a Dryer for the hole building , and you really dont wanna dry your cothes in there ) , or you can just wait until the sun shines again ....
btw wind also takes care of the ironing ...
There's a wide disparity in incomes across Europe, and high electricity costs. As a result some countries have them and some don't.
Do Europeans think their lives don't matter? If they believe their lives matter they should take to the streets to demand free market healthcare because if you use $0 healthcare then you're sending the message that your life is worth $0.
Americans really think its normal to not have a washing machine in your apartment and instead have to walk down the street and use a laundromat, and thats wild to me cause i didnt know that shit was normal everywhere here after I moved from Romania.
