4:35 PM Genoa

I am sitting at the kitchen table keeping a watchful eye on the laundry machine as it does (I hope) its job. My first foray into laundry doing has met with mixed results. To wit – my clothes (1) are wet and (2) smell like laundry detergent. That said, they are much more of both (1) and (2) than I am necessarily comfortable with, given the lack of a dryer in the apartment.

I think the problem was that I assumed I could just load the machine up with all of my clothes and wash them. I know, I must be crazy. On further consideration, I think the issue is that this washing machine isn’t designed to work while full, only 1/3 or 1/2 full. Right now I am getting some serious turning and agitating action in the wash cycle, which is what I had hoped for. What I didn’t get before was any kind of spin dry at the end of the previous wash cycle, leading to some extremely wet clothes.

At least the machine works. Plus, it’s a good thing the washing machine comes with some instructions on the front, or I wouldn’t be able to use it at all, most likely. On the other hand, instructions in another language are likely to be as confusing as they are helpful.

In this case: I want the machine to spin and get rid of extra water from my clothes once it is done washing. So far I have not been able to make it do so. The key (in addition to the load issue) seems to be a button labeled ‘esclusione centrifuga’.

This is all well and good. However, what I cannot tell is whether this button means (a) ‘exclude the centrifuge’ or (b) ‘exclude water through centrifuge.’ My hope is that the answer is (b), and that the reason that it did not work even though I ran the wash twice – once on each setting, was because there was too much laundry in the machine for it to spin properly.

If that doesn’t work I’ll just have to start considering alternative methods of clothes drying.