in today's video we are going to talk  about doing laundry in switzerland

so this is episode two of our switzerland basics  series so this series is all about the back to  

basics if you are fresh in switzerland you  just want to know how basic things work this  

series is for you and we got so many requests for  this one which is really funny but people are so  

curious how to do laundry like a swiss how  do the swiss do laundry what can i expect  

when i move here so of course you all know by now  i'm sure that switzerland is definitely a country  

of rules and rule followers um so there  are a lot of rules that come to doing  

your laundry the main one that you need to  know is that you cannot do laundry on sundays  

your building will probably have signs that say  that ours does the hours are on the door i'll  

show everything when we get downstairs but you  definitely cannot do laundry on sunday you can't  

hang your clothes outside on the line on sunday  so make sure you are getting your laundry in  

monday through saturday next thing that you should  know is that you cannot hang your clothes to dry  

inside of your apartment this is in our lease  and it probably will be in your lease as well  

and the reason why they have this in leases is  because swiss houses you guys have seen the videos  

i'm sure where i'm showing you um around our swiss  apartment um they're very sealed all the doors all  

the windows extremely seal i would argue that  you know most apartments are pretty much like  

air proof how you say like no air is going in or  out okay no air is going in or out so if you hang  

dry clothes obviously the water goes somewhere  and it will go into the walls into the ceiling  

and that's not good so we do have two balconies  in this apartment and we do hang it outside  

in the summer but in the winter we have to hang  everything downstairs in the drying room which we  

will show you shortly so i keep saying i'll show  you in a second that is because our washer and  

dryer are downstairs in the basement so we live in  like a relatively normal nice apartment building  

but it is not necessarily standard in switzerland  to have a washer and dryer in your unit for  

your for yourself um you're more than likely  going to have a shared laundry laundry machine  

machine and dryer um you might get lucky  i've talked about this before i'm not saying  

every apartment does not have a washer dryer but  it is a little bit unlikely especially if you are  

in a big expensive city like zurich your chances  are probably less and less than if you're in more  

of a suburb you might have a little bit more  space so you might have a washer and dryer  

but i wouldn't expect it and it might be  something that you need to compromise on  

when you're searching for apartments you might  have to let go of that dream of having a washer  

in your unit but it certainly does exist i know  people that have washer and dryer in the unit  

but we do not the good news is if you are moving  to zurich or switzerland from a big city like new  

york where you don't even have washing machines in  every building and you had to go to a laundromat  

you probably will not have that situation here  almost every building is going to have a washing  

it's early i can't say washing machine a  washer and a dryer in the basement so it's  

not very likely that they'll say that there's no  washing facilities facilities on the premises at  

all it might happen but i have not seen it and  we looked at a lot of apartments and we did not  

really see that um but if you do find yourself in  that situation there are not a lot of laundromats  

here in zurich there are a few in smaller cities  you might not find any self-service um laundromats  

so yeah you'll probably have one in your apartment  so in this apartment like i said we have a shared  

washer and dryer and unfortunately we do have to  pay for it separately it's not included in our  

rent we have to pay for each load of laundry we  looked at a ton of apartments and it was about 50  

50. some of the buildings had laundry in the  basement where you don't have to pay per load  

and some of them you do have to pay but almost  every single one that had a paid machine came  

with a card like this it's not coin laundry that  i have seen one of those before but it's more more  

than likely you're going to have this kind of a  card chip system so how this works is this is how  

we pay per load um in our building we have to put  80 swiss francs on here at a time um that's a lot  

of money to like put on this laundry card but you  can't do less you can't do more you have to put  

80 swiss francs on here so you take the 80 bucks  cash you take the card you put it in the envelope  

you put your unit number on it and you put it  in the mailbox of the building maintenance guy  

and he only uploads them every two weeks so do  not let yourself get too low on funds at least  

in our building i'm sure it's kind of standard  maybe once a week or like for us only every  

other week so two times a month we can put money  on here so you want to make sure that you keep it  

full so i've got my laundry i've got my little  wonder card chip thing here let's go downstairs  

okay so we are down in our laundry room and some  things to point out so you might have a sign up  

sheet like this where basically you just write  in when you want to do the laundry so we have um  

you know morning slot midday and evening slot so  you can do laundry from 7am till 9pm and you can  

sign up for those slots um months in advance in  our apartment it's kind of like unofficial there's  

one person that takes monday i always take tuesday  it's tuesday um there's another guy that takes  

like every other wednesday and then it's pretty  much free for all but it's really not an issue  

in our building but i have heard of people saying  that they have really a hard time getting laundry  

done that they can only do it like once a month  if they're lucky um some apartments will give you  

like a dedicated spot but we quite like having  this because it has some flexibility so you can  

see we have one washer one dryer some apartments  again might have more than one we've toured some  

that had a few washers um some had no dryers  it just kind of depends but i can tell you that  

a lot of people in switzerland i would say most  people nobody in our building uses the dryer um  

we have to pay for it and it just takes a long  time and people are quite used to hanging their  

clothes here in the room right next door so let's  throw in some laundry so the one major difference  

i've noticed with um laundry machines washers  in switzerland is that the um drums are far  

far smaller than the standard size in america  i know that this is a very um like high-end  

made in switzerland fauzou washing machine but the  drum is actually relatively small and doesn't hold  

a lot of clothes so i find myself doing a lot  of loads um whereas in the us the drums were  

like getting bigger and bigger every single year  okay so then i have everything in i just need to  

turn it on so this is how you power the machine  so i'm going to go here and hit washing machine  

and now it says great valen which means choose  device i guess so washing machine big descartes  

sorry for the horrible accent so i'm just going  to hold this up and now it says my um like budget  

on here my amounts on here is six dollars so now  the machine has power going to it and i think it  

just flashed that it's one frank per hour but i'm  not exactly sure on the price but it's definitely  

not expensive so in europe it seems that they tend  to wash based on temperature in celsius obviously  

so you're actually supposed to wash clothes  on 40 i think but i usually do 60 and then to  

save money i hit this little guy right here so  it goes from 1 hour 13 to 39 it's a quick wash  

for me that works just fine so we'll come back in  39 minutes and i'll show you how we hang the wash  

okay the laundry is done definitely make sure  you set a timer we always go upstairs and set a  

timer because if you do leave it in for too long  and you're not like signed up for the whole day  

if somebody comes down and wants to do laundry  i would say in my experience swiss people are  

not shy about taking your stuff and putting  it somewhere same goes for if you are taking  

up a lot of space in the drying room and your  clothes are dry if somebody needs space they're  

not going to be shy to take your clothes down or  go knock on your door and stuff like that i know  

in some cultures that would be seen as quite  confrontational but in my experience the swiss  

are not really shy about doing that so just make  sure you're respectful um and you move your stuff  

as soon as possible also i wanted to point out  we have a whole wall of rules i can't show you  

everything but we have five pieces of paper here  with all the things that you should and shouldn't  

do and it actually says every time you use this  room you're expected to clean the whole machine  

like the top the inside clean the floors clean the  filters um make sure that basically you're leaving  

everything in pristine condition it's all noted  here along with the hours you can use the machines  

it's all in german um but yeah lots of rolls  but let's go pull this stuff out and hang it up  

so like i said line drawing is the thing here so  we have this big room with these huge lines which  

is actually really nice because it is february you  cannot really hang your stuff outside right now  

in the summer we have a bunch of lines in the  back of the building so you can actually hang  

the stuff out in the sun and in summer you can  dry stuff in like 30 minutes which is really nice  

but i find hanging stuff in winter in this  kind of an environment it takes about 24 hours  

or up to a day and a half kind of depends so  yeah i'm just gonna hang this up okay back in  

the apartment by the way if you're still  here watching this i don't know 10 minute  

video about how to do laundry let me know in the  comments if you're still watching and by the way  

i actually wanted to say for all the people  that live in switzerland that are watching  

please leave your experience with laundry in the  comments down below i know it will really help  

the people that are watching this video that are  thinking about moving to switzerland and of course  

every building every canton you know they're  going to be slightly different so maybe right  

where you live and just a little bit about your  laundry situation do people take down your clothes  

what kind of rules do you have leave your comments  down below so everyone can um read about different  

experiences that they might expect to run into if  they move here but basically now i just want to  

show you one last thing sorry i know this video is  getting very long talking about how to do laundry  

but i mentioned that we dry our clothes outside  on the balcony in the summer i just wanted to show  

you in case you've never seen one of these before  i never saw one of these growing up in the united  

states um so these are very common it's basically  like a drying rack it's super handy this one's  

just little from ikea and you can put on here like  your socks and underwear pop it out on the balcony  

and then we also have one that's large here it's  basically the same kind of steel except it's sorry  

we don't have a lot of closet space here this is  our only closet actually um so it's just basically  

the same but wider bigger and it has some wings  that flap out and then we have some clips here  

to hang it on here so these both just go on our  balcony in the summer and also the ironing board  

here i should point out when you if you're new to  line drying your clothes you'll probably see that  

you're gonna have to iron a lot more because  stuff can get kind of like crunchy as opposed  

to when you put stuff in the dryer it comes out  fluffy um a lot of times your pants and shirts  

and stuff will be kind of like crunchy crinkly so  ironing them with like a lot of steam really helps  

um on that front but that is it for today's video  i hope you guys enjoyed this switzerland basics  

we're definitely reading your comments about what  videos you want to see which ones you think would  

help you the most so we have all sorts of  videos planned thanks for the support guys  

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