Dirty Business

There are two magical letters in English.
And no, it's not AC (close enough, but not quite there), TP (useful but magical??!? Me thinks not), BP (they are more on the black magic side of things, excuse the pun - no harm intended), IQ (overrated), OK (or KO - according to your level of energy), HR (they are wicked), ET (alien, not magical) or IV (life saving maybe, but there is nothing magical about getting a needle in your arm, believe me).

Nope.
The magic comes from opposite sides of the alphabet.
W and D.
W/D.
Washer/Dryer.

Surprising?
You must be born in the USA just like Bruce then. Because for all of us French expats the laundry situation is a dire one.
Allow me to explain.

As long as I can remember, I had a washing machine in my house. No dryer, mind you but something mechanical and electricity-operated that allowed my mother to wash our clothes and all the linens. Never even questioned it. We had drying ropes above the bath tub like 3/4 of the population, and when we had the chance to have some sort of outdoor space (most of the time, a small size balcony) we would use a drying device called "Tancarville" - in reference to one of the biggest suspended bridge in the country and whose design is actually quite reminiscent of this architectural 'wonder':

The aesthetics is highly disputable, I allow you that one, but the convenience of not having to fold back every single piece of clothing hanging above the tub before taking your shower? Priceless, I am telling you.
(My mom finally gave in and bought a dryer a couple of years ago. Everything is getting lost.)

When I moved out of the house I didn't have a W/(D) at once. In fact with my boyfriend, we used to take our laundry to our respective parents during the weekend. Everybody was doing the same; no shame. We didn't think twice about it. We really felt like 'real' grown ups when we were able to buy our fist Arthur Martin/Electrolux machine. The bathroom had been waiting for it for years; everything was already in place. It was simply a matter of cash. And laziness? Sure, if it makes you happy. We enjoyed our new luxury, and gladly climbed all the way up to the ancient attic to use the drying lines, their white plastic coating slightly yellowed over time but sturdy and efficient all the same.

Then.....I moved to the US.
And fell in laundry hell.

At first it wasn't that bad. True, I had chosen a room blindly on the Internet, praying for the best, and getting (almost) the worst. Tom and Terry were a middle-aged, lower middle-class couple. The rest of their lives was nothing average though; heavy-weight, hoarders, borderline stalkers and perverts, they had never heard the words 'brooms' or 'vacuum' and their 75-pound dog shed happily all over the place. Sharing their house was no small feast. I cried nonstop on the night of my arrival. Then got slightly used to it. Surprisingly enough they had a decent laundry room; walking in there was to take a trip back to the early 70s, but everything worked alright. Most of all, it was there.

I hit the bottom the following year. Hard.
By the time I had moved into a small semi-detached cottage on Mansfield Road, Mansfield Center, CT. It was quaint with its blue wooden sideboards, its little porch, its long driveway and its 13 windows and 3 doors which transformed the whole thing in a 450 square foot icebox in the winter. Of course, it didn't have any WD. And living in the middle of the woods (albeit on a main road) I had to drive to clean my laundry.
Un-freaking-believable.

The laundromat was by the UConn campus, located on the first floor of the tiny strip mall across the street from the local high school. It was small, smelly, Greek-owned and operated. Laundry days were by far the worse ever; sitting there for hours in the middle of the over-heated room among other jaded students and the couple of poor Puerto Rican families living in the area was the most depressing experience I had had to go through in my entire life. Then winter came. Connecticut had to live through 8 or 9 blizzards that year; that was brutal.
I will always remember the day where I parked the car in the mall, grabbed the laundry basket and the detergent in the trunk, braved the ice, the snow and the wind, half stumbled inside, filled in a couple of washers (one with whites, one with colors) - only to discover that the Purex that I kept stored in the cold pantry at home had frozen in the bottle.
I was so stunned that I burst out laughing.
The in-house distributor was empty.
I had to drive all the way back to Walmart to buy my fix. A 15-mile ordeal that took me way more than an hour, and probably killed a few hundreds of my brain synapses all at once.

Chicago treated me better. But not having to worry so much about getting to the premises themselves led me to question the efficiency of my new cleaning surroundings. 'Cause, you see, stains had the unfortunate tendency to - literally - stick around. No matter how fresh they were, no matter the detergent I used - the diagnostic was invariably the same: not. good. I first blamed it on the cleaning supplies (what can you really expect from something called "Purex"?!? Honestly? I just picture a whole mashed-potato mess, clumping and sticking all over my clothes and making everything much, much worse than before) before realizing that we basically used the same products back home, under different names (may I add here that our marketing firms are doing a significantly better job?!?).
I then came to realize that the machines themselves were the real culprits. I should have known right away. Most of them belong, style-wise, to my grandmother's basement (if she had had one). They are bulky, noisy, incredibly basic....should I go on?!? They just don't look efficient. See the difference for yourself:













on the left: French model "Le Linge"
on the right: American GE model

I think it's clear enough.

Next time I hear someone, even as a joke, asking: "Do you have computers in France?" I might just tell them that no, we don't but we have at least perfected The Art of Clean.
And that's plenty to be proud of.

PS - Moving out of our condo two months ago, needless to say that the in-unit W/D was a top requirement of mine. You live, you learn.