As I mentioned in my last post, the story of getting to know my washer/dryer is longer than any other everyday adjustments so far, and I'd like to document the funny (not-so-funny times) with it so hopefully I can laugh about it someday :). The day after we arrived in Norway I knew I had a lot of laundry to do and thought I would take more than at a glance at our washer/dryer. And this is what I saw:
I decided not to wash that day and figured I could wait a little longer before we ran out of clean underwear. Then I could take time to really sit down and figure it out.
Flash forward ahead to a few days later when Barrett is at work and Lily is sleeping so I have no more reason to procrastinate washing. I pulled out my iPad with google translate ready, perfectly confident it couldn't be that different than washers and dyers I have used in the past. Well I was wrong! It probably took me 15 minutes just to translate the two rows of buttons and the vertical row. I figured the vertical row must be indicators of where the cycle was and I found out tørk meant dry. However, what kind of dry is "cupboard dry" and "iron dry"? That's not really indicating heat is it? I got discouraged and decided I didn't want to start the task of translating around the dial, and would just ask my landlords for help.
In the mean time I posted a picture on Instagram/Facebook and got some great responses. Here are three of the best. From my all too funny past coworker, Melanie, she said: "I would wash the clothes on Finskyll, press the button sensitiv and start the wash. And then I would pray real hard that the lights don't come on for 'Slutt' or 'Overdose'. Good luck" Ha ha! Thanks Melanie. And my good friend, Julie's, husband Nate (which I'm sure he'll be happy about being quoted in my blog ;)) said "My vast knowledge of Norwegian tells me you should avoid the Slutt setting. Just trying to be helpful!" And from another past coworker whose intelligence is obviously way above mine, Denise said "I'm thinking that the sentrifug setting has a really fast spin cycle that separates the lights from the darks", with a picture of a medical needle by it. Um, I had to look up what centrifuge even meant when I was translating, but Barrett had to explain the other reference to me which had gone right over my head. At least I got some good laughs while waiting to do my wash. And don't worry, there is no translation for slutt or overdose. My landlord didn't even know what they meant. Maybe just there for a good laugh??
Anyway, back to the story, that night we went to talk to my landlord about several things and I asked about the oven and the washing/drying machine settings. When I specifically asked about the cupboard dry versus iron dry they smiled a little and started explaining how cupboard dry is dry enough that you could hang something in the cupboard to finish drying, while iron dry means you would need an iron to finish drying it. So... iron dry is less dry? Yes. Of course that makes sense. Huh? Can't I just have low, medium, and high dry settings? My landlord came down and looked at the rest of the settings, and just to make the story even better he repeatedly said he didn't really have much to do with cooking or washing. He did awkwardly translate most things, of which I found out the dial does pretty much everything and that there was an option with temperature settings under a colors section and a whites section. Okay, perfect I'm good to go. So I do the wash and experiment with drying settings. Since timed dry only lasted for 11 minutes I decided I guess I'll test the cupboard/iron dry. On the clothes I didn't want dried on high I tried iron dry and this is what came out.
Man, they weren't joking that you have to iron as these dry! And the clothes are still very hot when they come out so I don't think this setting is actually a low dry setting, just for less time. Maybe our clothes have shrunk. I'm sure we'll find out over time.
I got my first week's load of washing done and felt fine. Maybe a little annoyed I'm going to have to hang dry pretty much all of my clothes, even after they've been dried in the dryer, and that they'll still come out really wrinkled. Also take into account that the washer and dryer are the same machine so I have to wait for one load to completely finish washing and drying before I can start another load, and the washer and dryer settings are both about 100 minutes separately for each cycle. I told myself "Okay, I need to accept that washing is going to take a lot longer than it did before. But I have plenty of time at home to do that."
On my second attempt I actually felt pretty confident and finished my whites with no problem. Then I go to take out my next load and what did I find? The load had been dyed a pinkish color.
It's hard to tell in the first picture so I tried to zoom in, but the white in that shirt is far more pink than it looks.
Luckily it was a small load so I took it out to assess the damage. After calling Barrett over, of course. Normally little things like this totally push me over the edge. I'll start growling out of frustration or sometimes if the moment is right, even shed a couple tears beating myself up before I can handle the situation calmly. But for some reason, this time I stayed relatively calm and we decided that only a couple items were worth the effort to try to fix. In trying to understand what bled and why, I explained to Barrett that the clothes haven't come out cold like I would like a cycle of colors to be washed in. After a couple questions I realized my common sense is not great. There's only a cold setting in the sensitive or handwash side of the dial, so I had just been washing in the coldest setting of Celsius on the color and white side. Well, the cold is 30 degree Celsius, which Barrett reminded me is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Duh! I could have figured that out. I guess now I'll be washing everything as sensitive since that is where the "Kaldt" setting is.
Do Norwegians really wash all their clothes in warm to hot water and then air dry everything? Maybe sometime when I'm in the presence of a native Norwegian and the topic comes up, I'll ask how they do their wash.
Since we don't have a car, and I don't know Norwegian products, I waited a couple days until a friend in the ward was taking me out shopping and told me where I could find something equivalent to Oxi, which is my go-to for stains. I did find some sort of Oxi at the store and soaked everything twice, this shirt three times, but NONE of the color came out. I swear if I had my normal stuff it would have worked. But, oh well, this shirt and Lily' pajamas (which don't matter much) are the only things that are really noticeable so I guess goodbye to this shirt.
I started wash again this morning. It's 3:00pm and my first load is still drying. I'm sure everything will go just fine this time around. Wish me luck!
