Many things go into the concept of home. Some are tangible, others are not. Sibylle and I have started, slowly, to make a home, together. Tonight we added something tangible to the list of home in the form of a new front-loading clothes washer.
Her townhouse in Manhattan, and the apartment I had, that we shared here in Kansas City, both had washers and dryers that belonged to the structure, and when we moved to our new townhouse we left them behind. For the past month or so we’ve been doing laundry in the Laundromat, which isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either.
The only advantage the Laundromat has is that it realizes a form of parallel processing. You can wash all five loads at the same time. Dry them simultaneously too. At home multiple loads are serialized through the single thread of one washer and one dryer. And since the washer usually takes about twice as long to rid the clothes of water as it took the washer to add, the process is throttled to the speed of your dryer.
Our search for a dryer continues, but we are both very pleased to have a washer scheduled for delivery this Friday.