The importance of washers and dryers

My husband has checked out two living spaces for us this week and one is looking pretty positive right now. He will still go on an official home search with the company’s consultant, but the place he likes sounds promising to me –another expat coworker and his family are already there, and it takes only a few minutes to walk into town, which is a quaint suburb of Manchester. The first thing you encounter on this walk is a Starbucks. I am sold. You can also walk to the grocery store, restaurants and shops, and believe me, the less driving I need to do on the wrong, I mean different, side of the street, the better my frame of mind will be. Also, on a positive note, this place has a separate washer and dryer. This may seem funny, however, in England, there is something I have never seen or heard about in the U.S. Not to say they don’t exist here, but I was blissfully unaware of their existence. It is a washer/dryer combo that they use to conserve space. You wash your clothes, remove them and shake them out, and then put them back in on a different setting to dry them. I found out months ago from my research that we should try to avoid this combo appliance, as it takes 4 hours to wash and fully dry a small load of clothes. And I mean a SMALL load. My husband has one of these appliances in his temporary apartment. After spending all day today getting two small loads of laundry done, he whole heartedly agrees that we do not want one of these space savers. Two kids plus two adults equals an amazing amount of laundry each week. I personally don’t want to spend all day, every day doing laundry, only to never, ever be caught up. Not my idea of fun. On a sad note, my dog is officially living at my parent’s house now. While she was with me this week, I had her groomed, she had her annual check-up and shots and the vet wrote out a prescription for her dog food (yes, she is kind of a high maintenance girl). I also bought her a name tag with her new address and phone number on it. Today we moved all of her things into my parents house. Within a few hours of being there, as what I am sure was a sign of rebellion, she left a nice deposit on her new living room floor. I am thinking that she is trying to get “kicked out” so she can come back home with me, as this is pretty uncharacteristic of her. I don’t need to share my mental state about this, it is not a good one, but since our house is officially on the market in less than one week, and in two weeks we start moving stuff into storage, it is better for her to just be at their house now. I will still see her at least a few times before we go. I am still completely overwhelmed with the amount of things we need to do, not only to get the house ready to sell, but to get everything packed up. My mom, after a few days at my house this week just looked at me and said –"I am overwhelmed for you –I have been packing and packing and it seems to not be making a dent". Tell me about it –thanks mom.