Život v Cizine (was La Vie Expatriée)

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Housekeeping

The popularity of studio apartments in Paris makes for very space-efficient appliances.

For example, the stove in my kitchen has a dishwasher built in. There's the range on top, a fairly shallow oven (no roasting turkeys in this oven; I'm not even sure if I could manage a roast chicken, which may account for the popularity of roasted chickens in the butcher shops), and at the bottom, a drawer that opens out as a dishwasher rack. While demonstrating the amenities of the apartment to me, my landlord explained that I can not use the oven and dishwasher at the same time. It's hard to imagine that this is a problem that would arise often. And in fact, I've not yet had occasion to use the dishwasher. Nor have I used the oven all that often, either.

I also have a washing machine at my disposal, which is certainly handy. It's very cunningly designed. It's less than 20 inches wide, not even as wide as a one of the cabinets, so it fits quite handily into a corner of the kitchen. It loads from the top, and the drum rotates vertically, rather than horizontally. It doesn't hold a lot, so I'm needing to do laundry a few times a week. And there's no dryer: instead, I have a folding rack that I drape damp laundry over. Apparently, the existence of a washing machine but not a dryer is a fairly common arrangement. On sunny days (we've had a few recently), I look up sometimes to see people drying laundry on their windowsills.

I also have a towel drying rack in the bathroom. This seems rather an indulgence, but it is nice to have a dry and toasty warm bathmat and towels in the morning.

Labels: housekeeping, Paris

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