alexist

Woman in front of us took the last parent & child space. Neil honked and yelled at her, "do you have kids?" She replied "no other spaces". Half the car park was empty. GAAAAH.

(I don't care about the spaces being in the front; I care about the extra space. Most car park spaces here are so narrow it's really hard to get a baby out if there are cars on both sides. I would actually prefer them to be slightly off the front, so people wouldn't take them out of laziness.)

I realised (when typing my reply to kathersluv) that I've lived in the UK too long! I'm now completely used to my European front loading machine. American top loaders draw off the house tank and mainly clean by agitation--most cycles are done on warm (about 30C). European front loaders are more reliant on heat.

So washing in cold in the US isn't quite so dumb--though I still wouldn't do it, especially for nappies. And if they're ecologically minded enough to have the new high efficiency front loading machines (which work like European ones, only with a bigger capacity and usually no 95C wash) then they really are in for problems, because you need the heat in those! (And given the efficiency, and the use of internal heaters rather than the tank, it's not such an ecological disaster to use warm water. Though I don't know if the new HE machines are mixed fill or cold fill only. Someone claimed once that American machines can't heat water as efficiently because of 120V electricity, so they only maintain tank temperature. I'm skeptical because 1) you can buy a Euro style/size machine like Miele or Bosch with a 95C wash in the States, and that's probably cold fill only just like the European ones; 2) most washing machines require a 240V outlet; 3) the sanitise cycle on American-size FLs is 70C, which is higher than the temperature of your domestic water tank--normally 130-140F, or under 60C. Sorry for mixing my C and F there.)

I've actually come to love my European machine. Only things I don't like are the small capacity and super-long cycle time (but I'm told that my machine has exceptionally long cycles). The clothes come out cleaner, things don't get battered by the agitator, and 1600 rpm spin is fantastic at speeding up the drying. I'm sold on front loading machines.

Someone else pointed out the bottle of San Pellegrino at their "eco" gathering. Ha! Ha!