NEVER buy a front-loading washing machine.

I understand why these are the only–yes, the only–kind of washer that can be bought in Norway. They are supposed to be efficient when it comes to space, water usage, and electricity. Well, it’s true about the space-saving bit. All Norwegian washers are 58 cm wide. That’s less than 23 inches, for those of you not using a “real” system of measurements, as my husband likes to say. Hold your hands up in front of you, two feet apart. That’s how wide my washer is. I can’t get one bigger than that. I can get ones that are smaller than that, and I can get ones that actually load from the top, but even the ones that load from the top still rotate the clothes on top of each other, like in a clothes dryer, so they have nearly all the disadvantages of a font-loader. So yeah, front-loading washers are space-efficient. But this means that you must do your laundry in many small loads, instead of in a couple of large ones. Because of this, I have to do laundry almost constantly. It doesn’t help that a load takes 65 minutes to complete–and that’s the “short” cycle! Part of the reason the cycle takes so long is certainly due to the fact that they only accept a cold-water hose. They heat their own water. Most likely this makes it easier to get a very specific temperature of water, but I imagine it’s terrible for the energy bill. Even though hot water is included in the monthly fee we pay to the borettslag (co-op?), I don’t get to use any of it to wash my clothes. No, the washer must heat up several little loads of freezing-cold Norwegian tap water each time it does a load, and I must pay for that electricity separately. How can this possibly be energy-efficient?

Supposedly these kinds of washers are also efficient in their use of water. Well, I can tell you it sure doesn’t seem like it when you have bucketfuls of dirty, soapy water all over your bathroom floor. Why might you ever get into that situation? Well, if there’s something wrong with the washer, it will just stop, regardless of where it is in the cycle. The door will be locked, as the door immediately locks as soon as you start a cycle (making it impossible to add any last-minute items). It should lock, of course–if you open the door, you’ll have bucketfuls of water all over the floor!

There is a little door on the front of the washer that you can open, under which is a valve that can be turned to drain the washer in case anything goes wrong. Fine and dandy, but it’s just a recessed hole in the front of the washer, so there’s no way to get the water that’s gushing forth to gush gracefully into a bucket. You just have to hold a bucket in front of it and accept that maybe only 60% of the water will actually make it into the bucket. When the bucket is full, you have to keep holding the bucket with one hand while tightening the valve with your other hand to stop the water (and you have to twist the top of the valve many times to get the flow of water to stop), all the while balancing on your knees in previously mentioned cold, soapy water. This is not a particularly easy task, especially given that the hole from which the water is gushing is about two inches off the floor. You can, of course, adjust the speed at which the water gushes from this whole by how far you open the valve, but it’s a catch-22. The slower the water gushes, the less water you get into the bucket–more water runs between the hole and the washer’s casing. The faster the water gushes, the easier it is to get it into the bucket, but the bucket fulls up faster then, and since it’s at an angle of about 20° from the floor, it fills up really fast. Then you get the problem of holding up the overflowing bucket with one hand while trying to tighten the valve several turns with soapy water gushing all over your hands and the floor.

*sigh*

I’ve had problems with washers at least four times while living in Norway. Three times the problem resulted in buckets of water on the floor, once in an insurance claim from the buy living underneath us. I guess this is part of the reason why all Norwegian bathrooms have drains in the middle of the floor. (I just love the popular Norwegian method of showering that involves just standing in a corner, not even necessarily with a shower curtain, and letting the water run all over the floor. They use a long squeegee to get it all into the drain afterwards.) Once the washer stopped working because it got a SIM card in it. For the uninitiated, SIM cards are as thick as a credit card, but measure about ½” by ¾”. Not a large piece for foreign material. This time the washing machine stopped working because it got a couple of hair ties in it. It doesn’t take much. Lord have mercy upon me should I accidentally wash a tube of Chapstick!

You may have had the experience with your dryer that sometimes the clothes get twisted and tangled up together. This happens in Norwegian washers, too, but on a much grander scale. Every time I wash anything that consists of articles of clothing larger than underwear, I have to take the articles of clothing out of the washer one by one, untwist them, and then put them in the dryer. If I don’t, they’ll take even longer than usual to dry, and they’ll dry twisted so they’ll be all wrinkly. This is partially my dryer’s fault, too. Not much tumbling happening since it’s also less than 23 inches wide. (Again, I want to impress upon you that these are not compact models built for apartments or people concerned about energy costs–this is it, all you can get here.) The low water levels, long cycles, and lack of separation by a central axle also cause an inordinate amount of wear and tear on clothing. New clothes start looking old real fast when you put ‘em on one of these babies.

Speaking of wear and tear: Recently, after my dog pissed on my bed, I washed my queen-size (thankfully rubber-backed) mattress pad in the washer. It barely fits, but I’ve washed it before without incident. I remember sitting in the office when I hear a weird thumping sound come from the bathroom, after which the spinning of the washer, which was centrifuging at the time, slowed waay down. It started up again right after that, so I figured everything was OK. When the load was done, however, and I went to take the mattress pad out, I saw that it was twisted and bundled up like a belly button or roll or something–completely smooth on the outside with all the material twisted up on the inside. Completely smooth except for the huge rip at the bottom of the bundle. The washer was spinning, see, and pulling the mattress pad in all different directions. Since the material had been all twisted up earlier in the cycle, the pressure was too much and it just ripped. Not a silk blouse–no, a rubber-backed thick cotton mattress pad. Amazing. It took about five minutes to untwist the damn thing.

I think it’s particularly amusing that Norwegians somehow believe that it’s tumble-dryers that cause clothing to get torn up and worn-looking. They also believe that tumble-dryers will make clothing be stiff and scratchy. Instead, they prefer drying their clothing on lines outside, or inside during winter. Or, if they’re gonna get real high-tech, they’ll get a drying closet, which is basically a closet-sized cabinet with a heating element and fan and rods on which you can hang your wet clothes. Particularly nice with towels–after you shower, you can remove the outer layer of your skin with a cuddly-soft line-dried piece of sandpaper…I mean, terry-cloth. Fabric softener is just beginning to come into vogue here, thankfully. Of course, they don’t know not to use that on towels, though.
Other irritations–you cannot dye in the washer, you cannot control the load for a lengthy soak, you cannot add bleach, all detergents and fabric softeners must be added through a little drawer that gets all disgusting and gummed up and crusty, the spin cycle vibrates the entire apartment building (no, I’m not exaggerating).

In short, NEVER buy a front-loading washer.

Mental Floss has an interesting article in its current issue about Michael Marmot and his Status Syndrome Theory. Interesting…I haven’t seen this research mentioned outside of fat acceptance circles before.

I may be many things, but I’ve never considered myself to be a prude. Sometimes the ads I see here in my city, though make me wonder. Scandinavia is of course known for its relative level of “comfort” with the naked body, but sometimes I think it really goes too far.

Ikea recently had an ad campaign featuring all different colors of asses next to their wares. Likewise, some stocking company advertised using a bare rump. I found both of these ad campaigns to be a little–well, not shocking, exactly, but definitely gratuitous and not something I’d ever see in the US. Now Oslo City, the big mall in the middle of downtown, has has jumped on the bandwagon. They’ve been getting edgier with their advertising for a while now: recent campaigns have included scantily-clad, freakishly-muscular female dancers and, *gasp*, old people dressed and behaving as if they were teenagers. For Valentine’s Day they’ve gone all out and are featuring photographs of naked men and women together in suggestive positions. Asses only–this isn’t pornography after all, it’s art! Some of the ads are just sexual, while others, well, it looks like the people in the ads are actually having sex. (I’ll try to get my digital camera down to the bus stop and take a picture for you.) The ads are all over the city, mostly at the public transportation stops, close-up and bigger-than-life. The consumer ombudsman has censored the ads. Instead of taking the posters down, Oslo City has instead glued a big black banner over the offending areas of the models’ bodies, doing little to decrease the titillation factor.

Apparently this kind of thing is just wallpaper to ethnic Norwegians (I once remember seeing “Ai no corrida” on one of the Norwegian Broadcasting Network’s public TV channels). I imagine it’s only us ferners they’re scandalizing with this kind of advertising. If they really want to be edgy, they ought to show some fat models in skimpy clothes. Then the Norwegians really wouldn’t know what to think.