I Feel Like a Dum@ss!!

I've not minded not having a dryer, but it did take me 30 minutes as a string of curse words to figure out how to use the £"£$£" oven. 

Yep, that's what I call "fluffing!"

And I thought fluffing was something else entirely.  

I'm saying nothing LOL

And I thought fluffing was something else entirely.  

LOL!  I don't think that refers to drying clothes though!   

And I thought fluffing was something else entirely.  

OK, well that might be, in some circles, but if I say "I'm gonna fluff my shirt" then it should be pretty clear what I mean to do.  

I am willing to conform to a lot of "British" ways but I refuse on that one.

I wouldn't worry about that.  Maybe it's the circles people move in but it never occurred to me that having a dryer was unusual until I started reading this site.  I'm in my 30's and grew up in a working class area, we always had a dryer and, as far as I know, so did most other people we knew.

We are renting a house with a huge backyard but it's completely empty (i.e...nothing to hang the clothes line from and because we rent we can't stick anything in the ground) so I couldn't even hang my clothes out if I wanted to.

Are you sure about that? Most landlords would find it quite normal to stick drying lines up, and we were certainly allowed to do things with our gardens in rented places. I'd be very surprised if you were prohibited from putting up a clothes line in an empty back garden.

Most of them just stake in and you can take them out anytime you want.

I've not minded not having a dryer, but it did take me 30 minutes as a string of curse words to figure out how to use the £"£$£" oven. 

Yep.  The oven was a challenge.  Our new oven is even more bizarre than the last, but at least I figured out the basics in our last flat.  

The washer was also a source of WTF-ness.  Even reading the directions, I wasn't sure which area to put the detergent in.  

I completely humiliated myself by having to email the landlord to ask how to work the heating.  

Are you sure about that? Most landlords would find it quite normal to stick drying lines up, and we were certainly allowed to do things with our gardens in rented places. I'd be very surprised if you were prohibited from putting up a clothes line in an empty back garden.

Yup I'm positive (we asked).  It's kinda hard to explain but our houses are basically in a cul-de-sac.  There are 4 or 5 different houses with 4 houses each (2 in front and 2 in back) and there are no fences to separate any of them (so basically our yards are one big circle around the back of all the houses) and it would be "unappealing" to put anything up.  

I don't get why people DON'T like ironing.. I've ironed my clothes since I was 12. The only one in my family, mind, that didn't use the dryer. In the US I only dried undergarments and towels. Here, we dry nothing as we worked out it costs near £.50/hour and it takes something like three hours to dry stuff! Not worth it at all! So we bought a really nice clothes airer from John Lewis (that my darling MIL took on the bus with her!) and clothes dry in roughly 2 days for cotton and 3 for jeans. Works well enough.

The iron, though, I thought it was broken! In America they heat up and the light STAYS on. Here they heat up, with the light on, then they wait until they cool to heat again. I could not figure out why the light kept going off!!!!!

Yup I'm positive (we asked).  It's kinda hard to explain but our houses are basically in a cul-de-sac.  There are 4 or 5 different houses with 4 houses each (2 in front and 2 in back) and there are no fences to separate any of them (so basically our yards are one big circle around the back of all the houses) and it would be "unappealing" to put anything up.  

You're kidding! That's annoying You can get little airing racks that hang on radiators. Do you have gas radiators or air?

They're not very attractive, but they fold away so you can put them in a cupboard or under the sofa or something.



Edit: like this?

http://www.airershop.co.uk/LeifheitQuartettUniversalRadiatorClothesDryer.htm

That's a new one for me. Maybe it's a regional thing?  My husband calls it a counter top. I'll watch for it now. One thing that did confuse me was my husband asking me to hand him the torch out of the cupboard? Huh? I was looking in the cupboard for a minute or so before he finally said I mean flash light!

It is a regional thing, I call it "the board"!

I can't wait 2-3 days for something to dry...it's just not possible!!  I am willing to conform to a lot of "British" ways but I refuse on that one.

Don't confuse something as the "British way" with what your husband's family does. I had a dryer before DW came over (my mum had one for years) What I've had to explain to her though is to let it complete it's cycle, it is a condensor drying and the last 5 mins of the programme is a cooling cycle to cool down all the elements.....switch it off whilst it's still hot and it eventually breaks down as I discovered once and the engineer explained when he came to repair it!
What she can't get used to is not being able to open the washer up because she forgot to put something in once it's started....I'll be putting my shirts in and then I hear a desperate shout from the living room that she has something to go in just as I press the on button! 

We've got the combo washer/dryer in the kitchen, though the drying is basically just getting the extra water out. We dry stuff on the radiators, and I iron the shirts damp out of the dryer. I don't find ironing a problem, I don't have a job at the moment, so I'm happy to help out with that stuff right now. (we'll see what happens in the future )

My DH calls the counter top "surfaces" which we don't have enough of in the kitchen.