There are a number of things that are different for us here, but I want to pick some topics to elaborate on. Let me talk about washing clothes in Germany for a minute! I am not someone who wants someone else to wash my clothes so it’s really hard for me to let that go while living in my In-laws home, no matter how much my husband tries to convince me it’s fine.

First, the water is extremely hard and the high levels of chalk, or calcium and magnesium, which can make your clothes wear out much faster. Our new home will have a water softener system in the future to help with this but I’ve never seen anything like it. My stainless steel classes usually have a dusty white film in them when they dry and it’s just something I have never experienced. I will do another post about the effects of this hard water that you would never consider in your everyday life. I was able to learn more about this here!

Second, the size of the washing machines is around half the size of what we are used to. Our machine in Texas was approximately 15 kg and it was one of the biggest drums I could find. Here I am now sitting at one of the few Waschsalons (aka laundromat or washeteria) I could find in the general vicinity and I have 6 machines going because they are only 5 kg apiece! There is a “super” machine at 16 kg (€9) but it’s always in use.

A third thing to note is the cost, it’s €3,50 for a wash load and €0,80 for 10 min of drying time. Most of the time I usually walk out of here spending between €28 and €35.

Location, a fourth thing to note is that the location of these Waschsalons is almost never convenient. Located in the middle of downtown and with limited parking, it’s usually a bit of a tricky walk to get here and back to the car with all the clothes and the kids! Most of the time my husband is able to help out with this too. One of our cheap last minute suitcases that we got to carry our last minute purchases from Texas serves as my Waschsalon suitcase and I keep it with all my supplies and use it to go back and forth! It’s always nice to walk down a cobblestone street with a heavy wheeled suitcase making a racket! It’s even better when you are pushing a stroller with one hand and pulling the suitcase with the other while trying to get your two more mobile children to help or keep up! There is usually a park conveniently located in the walk path to distract from our mission and result in multiple promises to return that will probably be broken before the day is over.

Until our house is finished I will happily come sit at the Waschsalon for around an hour and a half to get all our laundry done! It’s actually usually nice to have all of it washed, dried and partially folded in that amount of time. Once we move, I anticipate many many many trips to the basement in my future. While I hope this does help my ass and will serve as a form of cardio, I am not looking forward to it!

With our final handover date in set and the count down on for moving into the house our search for some of the appliance has become more serious! While shopping for our future Washing Machine and Dryer I have run across so many different questions I have to find the answers to. Average machines are around 7 kg and they try to keep them as small as possible because not everyone has a lot of space. There are even dual machines that are both washer and dryer that you can get and you will find those in the kitchen in a lot of apartments! This won’t work for a family of five so my hunt is on! Hoping to keep everyone posted on our findings!