British Laundry
If your character uses a washing machine in Britain, you need to know that some things are different on this side of the Atlantic. Especially if you are American!
If this is what you think of when you are writing about when your character puts his bloodstained clothes into the machine....
....then your character is NOT in Britain.
Brits use front-loading machines that look like this:
There are a lot of reasons, mostly due to efficiency. Water and electricity are expensive, so consumers want a machine that uses less of both. Most UK and European machines are a cold-water fill only, using an integrated heater- which only heats exactly what is needed.
A top loader needs to use enough water to cover the clothes, but a front loader does not because the clothes are rotated into (and out of) the water. There is no "agitator" mechanism at all so it takes less electricity. Front-loaders use gravity more effectively and don't need an agitator. They can also spin faster than the American versions so the clothes dry faster.
Space is often at a premium in flats and smaller houses that don't have utility rooms. So, the front loader can have a tumble drier stacked on top. In fact, lots of washing machine manufacturers in the UK produce a single machine that has an integrated drier in the washing machine. And they put it in the kitchen.
So, there you have the reasons why no character will be using a top loader if the story is set in Europe or the UK.
And if you were thinking that maybe it's different in a laundromat, here's a British one:
That little trap door is where you put the detergent and fabric softener in.
Even the name is different here; it's called "launderette".
All that to accompany my reccie of a great new one-shot story by @standbygo:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
