Dennis and Lori Vs. The Washing Machine

Moving into a new place will have its challenges, no matter where you are. Not enough closet space, where should the garbage can go and what does that switch do are normal problems that must be dealt with. When the new place is in a foreign country where you barely speak the language, don't have a car and don't know a soul, it can be very challenging.

On Friday night when I posted on Facebook that "All is good" we had not started our laundry. We knew laundry could be an issue even before we moved in. The machine is an apartment sized, combination Washer and Dryer.

There is just no way it will possibly get our clothes as dry as a full sized dryer. That's fine, we can deal with that. What we hadn't counted on was this little box of hate walking across the kitchen even with a 200 pound man sitting on it. The spin cycle was not an option at 11:00pm so we shut it down and hung our dripping wet clothes to dry.

The next morning Lori did some investigating on the internet and found someone with the same problem. Apparently our washing machine (along with everything else in the apartment) is brand new and when it was delivered, the four retaining bolts keeping the drum in place were not removed. No problem, I can fix that. Well not so fast.

The person on the internet described them as screws so I went out and bought a mulit-tipped screwdriver. That was my mistake. I should have pulled the machine out and looked on the back and seen the hex-head bolts there. So back out I go. The local Monoprix didn't have wrenches so I bought a pair of linesman pliers. Once again, my mistake. This time Lori went out to the larger Monoprix, which is much further away, and bought a set of wrenches for me.

The bolts came out no problem and the drum can now move about freely. We did our best translating the instructions and selected the appropriate settings on the machine and started it just after lunch. We weren't paying much attention to time but the load was done just after supper. It took somewhere around 6 hours and the clothes were still damp. The next load we put on the "Rapide" cycle and used the "Eco-time" button. This load took about 3 hours and 20 minutes and we still had to hang them to dry.

 Anyway, we have clean clothes and some new tools so all is good. We've had some other issues as well. Netflix doesn't work in France, we don't have a blind for the bathroom window and we can't find regular bacon. Of all the issues, the bacon might be the most distressing.

db