I have been watching a lot of HGTV lately for tips to sell our house (moving into a new one in the fall) and noticed this thing on a lot of the UK shows and it is bothering me.
The thing I noticed is what I assume to be some sort of kitchen appliance it is always white and looks like a small front loading washing machine. It is bothering me because I have no idea what it is, they never say what it is and I have never seen anything like it in a kitchen in Canada or any kind of renovation show outside of the UK, yet almost every show that has been filmed in the UK has had one!.
Beats me. I can't think of one single appliance that is always white. My first thought was a dishwasher but they can be stainless, a color or even paneled wood to match the other cabinets. Perhaps you need Leslie. She does a heap of house selling. I don't know that she's sold one in UK but I'll bet she'd give it a try if the notion struck her. Polly
It is a washing machine dryer combo. Toss in the load of clothes and after they wash the machine goes into "dryer mode". Some are just front loader washers and people use and , sit down and hang on, they use clothes lines or racks to dry their clothes. Having the machine installed under the counter in the kitchen is common in Europe.
Scroll down on this link to washer/dryer and it will tell you how they work.
I think it might be the water heater. In many older homes in England, the water heater is located near the kitchen sink. In the shows I've seen, they usually want to enclose them.
THanks Val, I just couldn't imagine what kind of appliance would look so much like a front loading washing machine in the Kitchen. I have seen the washer dryer combo before but I doubt they are very popular here as I have only seen one in a store. It must take FOREVER to laundry that way! I suppose I find it a little odd that someone would do their laundry in the kitchen but I suppose if that is where you have room for it, that is where you do it!
I'm intrigued too! I hadn't noticed there was much difference in ours and the US's appliances, though yours are a big bigger perhaps. We have progressed a little from the Middle Ages - personally my clothes are always dried in a tumble drier. Of course some people can't afford a tumble drier, and some older people still prefer to dry clothes outside. The most popular way seems to be on a circular umbrella shaped clothes line.
Most appliances are white, though there are some stainless steel/silver coloured ones around. (Or they may be disguised by facings the same as the cupboards - but then you wouldn't know they were there, would you.) Coloured appliances did make an appearance some years ago, but like coloured bathrooms, everyone prefers white, so shops no longer stock the coloured ones - considered very 1970's, especially avacardo!
If you didn't have a utility /laundry room, and had all appliances under the countertop, you would have: a washing machine with a 'porthole' so you can see the clothes, (99% washing machines here are front loaders, top loaders are considered an old fashioned novelty); a tumble dryer standing next to it, which may also have a porthole and look very similar; a fridge, a similar sized freezer (probably most have a fridge/freezer double height combination, but we are talking under countertop here); a dishwasher looking like a washing machine but with a plain front.
There are washer/dryers around, but they are more expensive than having two machines, and few people have them as they aren't as efficient as the cheaper option of two purpose built machines. They do take up less space though.
Then on the worktop would be a microwave and always, always, always an electric kettle.
Of course there would be the cooker/stove/oven - either built in or freestanding.
Somewhere in the house there will be a boiler (gas or oil)for heating water and central heating. Many now are small inconspicuous boxes on a kitchen or garage wall, sometimes they may be freestanding but they have a chimney or vent pipe to an outside wall, but I have never heard of one that would go under a sink. Can only find pictures of the wall hung ones. Freestanding ones in a kitchen don't abut the units - suppose fire hazard. The storage cylinder for hot water is usually in a cupboard in the bathroom (room with the bathtub - the room with just the toilet and wash hand basin is never bathroom here - loo, toilet. Bathrooms always have baths and fluffy towels.
Most people have their cleaning gear under the sink - bucket, etc, and perhaps a small rubbish bin. We have a water softener under our sink, but the water here is particularly hard - before we lived in this part of the country didn't know anyone who had one.
This is the site of one of our major department stores electrical department (the big electrical retailers just have too many products to show you!) Does this strange appliance appear there anywhere?
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Think I have covered everything! Now, what can it be??
I like to hang what I can on the clothes line Estelle. I had 2 babies in cloth diapers and no dryer. I lived in San Diego, weather almost always was cooperative. These days I am in the desert and it seems silly to use a dryer when humidity is 7%! I do use it when the weather is cold though cause my hands take a beating in the dry cold air.
When I first got a dryer it came along with a late model electronic ignition stove. (God bless my brother for the hand-me downs) Using that old dryer with the new efficient stove made my gas bill go down. That neat old time stove I was using was an energy guzzler! I planted 2 trees last week, don't fly, and use a clothes line. I am trying to do my share too.
Hey! I'm not old, and I like my clothes dried outside. I knew it was going to be warm and sunny today - 10 C wahey! - but rainy in the evening. So I strung up my clothesline, put out 2 washes to dry, then nipped home at 3 to take it all in before I headed off to work. There really is nothing like clean clothes that smell like fresh cut grass and daffodils! You can't get that in a box of "Bounce" or some other horrid perfumed thing.
LOL....I never imagined a washer in the kitchen either, but that is what we had when we moved into this house. NO pantry, and the clothes washer was smack next to the dishwasher!! pardon my abbreviations, but WTF??!!!???
Needless to say, when we remodeled, the plumbing got rerouted so that the washer could go in the little hallway that leads to the downstairs bathroom (where the dryer was originally suposed to be) and the dryer is now in the garage, where it works wonderfully at both drying the clothes and heating the garage :-)
I guess it was a space issue, but...since the previous owners supposedly did some remodeling (other than adding a second story) you would have thought they would have figured this one out .
We have that arrangement. I would guess that 90% of houses and flats in Scotland have the same; at least, it's completely unremarkable here. For us it saves a lot of time since the washing machine is next to the back door so it's easier to put the washing outside, and it saves on plumbing costs since you need pipes going to the kitchen sink anyway.
I wonder if there's some underlying religious taboo behind Americans finding this odd, similar to the way many Maori don't like living in houses with a toilet in the bathroom?
============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
Wow! That looks like just the item this single woman needs! I'd rather have a washer/dryer combo than a dishwasher any day! Must start looking to see if I can find one in the US.
I wouldn't. As well being energy hogs they're a major cause of house fires in the UK, comparable to deep fat frying.
One thing a tumble dryer does better than a clothesline is fluffing up a new quilt, but it takes a BIG dryer to do that, the sort you'll only find in a laundromat.
============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ============== Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760 for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975 stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557
When we lived in Moosonee near Hudson Bay, our kitchen had the furnace, water heater and stacking washer and dryer along one wall! During the -40 degree winters, the kitchen was a great place to be......
Whilst I partially agree with this (the shop beneath my sisters flat had a washer/dryer combi "short-out" one weekend whilst she was away, and she came back to find the shop badly damaged by fire and her flat completely trashed by the smoke damage), unfortunately using a clothes line outside is almost impossible for us. We too live in a first floor foat, and altho we have steps down into the garden, they are getting dangerous and the maintenance people don't seem to be bothered about repairing/replacing them, so we cannot safely get down into the garden.
However, we don't often use the tumble setting on our washer/dryer for long, just enough to dry the worst of the water off and then our clothes go on clothes horses in front of the gas fires (no central heating here either). During the summer the clothes horses go out onto the tiny balcony at the top of the outside steps.
Roll on us winning the lottery and moving into our own house - complete with clothes line in the garden - I love the smell of outdoor dried clothes!
could it actually be a small front loading washing machine? they often are in the kitchen in the UK, only other thought is a small front loading drier, again, commonly in the kitchen in the UK, the idea of utility cupboards does not seem to have occurred to anyone there, so they are either in the kitchen, or more rarely than in the US, some kind of utility room.
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