It must be a remnant of my university days where laundry meant coins in slots and waiting on spinning agitators and tumbling dryers in order to have clean clothes ready to be hauled back to where ever I might be living. Or maybe it is the result of having lived in military stairwells where a bank of washers and dryers is shared property.
In any case, I think it should be an automatic courtesy when sharing laundry facilities with others, even if they are members of your own family.
After running the first load the other day I shoved them in the dryer. I just happened to glance down at the filter. Frowning I pulled it out, not all that amazed to find it covered lightly with lint. Given that happenstance it should be pretty obvious why I decided to check to make sure the water collector was empty. If you are scratching your head – we have a condenser dryer. No blowing hot air, no need to vent to the outside and no layer of dust attempting to snuggle into the clean clothes someone forgot to take upstairs this week. Last week? Month?
It wasn’t at all empty. In fact it was full. The volume was enough that I would have had a mess on the floor if I had started this load. Now in the US you wouldn’t be able to start the dryer should the water receptacle be full as someone somewhere would have made that error, gotten a wet floor and promptly sued the manufacture when they slipped and fell. I live in Germany. There is an assumption of common sense and intelligence. We don’t have warnings on the toaster reminding us that sticking a fork in there could be hazardous to our health. Or that sitting in the bathtub with a hair dryer is more the sign of a Darwin candidate than not. Here – you are expected to figure out completely on your own that if the water is condensed out of your clothes in the drying process that the removable container needs to be emptied before it overflows.
I don’t mind loads being forgotten on occasion, that happens to all of us especially as age creeps up and the to-do list becomes overwhelmingly long. But not cleaning up after yourself? That is like leaving dishes in the sink.
Oh, wait. Forget that comparison since I am the one most likely to do that…..
