How the wishy, washy, washer woman washes her clothes in Paris

If you're waiting for a blog about Nice, it's not happening here. Eric has all the photos on his camera. Instead, I'm going to thrill you with my tales of clothes washing!

I miss, miss, miss my Kenmore laundry appliances. Here in Paris we have a Candy all-in-one machine. That means you wash and dry your clothes in the same machine. They aren't stacked one on top of the other; it's just one unit.

The Candy CDB134 is very small, so it fits well into a small Parisian apartment.
Ours is in our bathroom, tucked away behind a cabinet door.
It has a very small capacity.

I think I've already talked about the confusion of figuring out how the thing works. I've got that mastered now, but the problem is that the machine just stinks.

The washing process takes 3-1/2 hours to complete. This does NOT include drying. Drying takes another 2-3 hours if you want your clothes (almost) completely dry. Do the math and you'll find that you can do one small load in one day. This means that for three people I'm doing laundry
almost every day.

However, instead of wasting all that time and energy on drying, I choose to hang most of the clothes to dry. By the looks of many windows, a lot of Parisians choose to do the same!

We don't have a clothes line or drying rack, so I use the
towel rack in the bathroom for shirts and dresses.

Jeans and shorts get draped over some very expensive Kartell chairs.

These babies cost between $300-500 each, and the rounded edge
really works well for draping clothes without getting creases.

The clothes eventually dry sometime the next day. That's when I pull out the iron, because air-dried clothes have a lot of wrinkles. In May, I spent some time with a friend in Colorado. After I unpacked, she asked me if I needed the iron, and I laughed.

"What's an iron?" I joked.

I seriously NEVER use one at home ... maybe once per year tops. Well, I have intimate knowledge of one now -- I just put on some You Tubes and iron away!

I did learn, however, that you can't iron nylon/spandex active wear.
That stuff melts on contact (sorry again about your shorts, Eric)!

Did I mention that I REALLY miss my Kenmore?