One of the first things you see when you enter our German house are our shoes. This is a cultural thing in a lot of countries, not just Germany, and I am a fan. Outside shoes are taken off when you get home and you either walk around in your socks or Hausshuhe (house shoes; slippers) We even have some pairs of machine washable Hausshuhe on hand in various sizes for visitors. The floors are mostly hard and cold, so it is nice to walk around the house in your cozy inside shoes. And there is less dirt and debris tracked around to clean up later.
The bathrooms have a lot of differences. Let's start with flushing. The little button is for a little flush, and the big button is for a big flush. This particular toilet is floor mounted, but in our last German house and most newer homes, the toilets are wall mounted and there is no tank. There is just a button on the wall.
Shelf toilets!
These are maybe kinda on their way out in Germany, but you still see them around a lot and we have two in our house. I guess the idea is that after you do your business, you might want to inspect it before you flush it?? I am most definitely not a fan! Most especially because we live in a house with four small children who OFTEN forget to flush, and there are no fans in these bathrooms. It is too regular of an occurrence around here to step into a very stinky bathroom.
Again, because this is an older German home, we have bidets. Bidets are for washing your bum. We don't use them and have sealed off the lids and use them as a place to hold a towel, change of clothes, magazine, or whatever.
We don't have a large water heater in our basement either. Instead we have these small hot-water-on-demand heaters in each bathroom, and one under the kitchen sink. They are supposed to be more energy efficient and the water can get VERY hot. I do tend to run out of hot water when I hand wash pots and pans if I leave it running, but if I give it a minute, then I have more hot water.
Our bathroom heaters are designed to double as towel racks. I love this feature! Why aren't all bathrooms of the world like this? It's very nice to have a toasty warm towel waiting when you get out of the shower.
Light switches and outlets.
German light switches are more like flat square plates that you push. They also tend to be lower than American ones. For some reason the light switches in this house are VERY low. (I usually turn them on and off with my knee when my hands are full.) The bathroom light switches are outside the bathrooms. Which makes no sense at all, but they are. Also there seem to be a lot less plugs in general and there is like ONE spot in the house where you can plug in your modem.
I love German windows!
All of the windows in our house can be opened wide like a door or "gekipt," tilted inward like this to allow airflow. Our windows also all have Rolladen. (The metal shades that you can see on the right-hand window in the picture.) Most of ours are operated by a button and can be open, closed like blackout blinds, or somewhat open like in the photo... like to allow airflow on warm Summer nights. In our old German house (and in our current basement) the Rolladen are operated by a pull cord on the side of the window.
The airflow and ability to block light are super important for controlling humidity and temperature as German homes do not have air conditioning. (I'm sure there might be a few that do, but it is seriously frowned on as energy wasting, expensive, and unnecessary.) In the Summer I get up early-ish and throw open all of the windows to air the house, and then close them and the Rolladen on the sunny side of the house to block the heat of the sun. We call this "cave life." In the Winter, I still open the windows wide for short periods to regulate the humidity in the house- to prevent mold mainly. The German word for this totally needed airing process is Stoßlüften.
Our heaters are different here too.
These are pretty standard German radiators that I have seen in every home. They work great but dry the air out like crazy. Some people use radiator humidifier things, but I just do the Stoßlüften and run a diffuser occasionally and that works for us. Again, there is no AC, so in the Summer we just use fans as needed.
Open riser stairs.
I know some houses in the US have these, and yes some German houses have closed risers, but most look just like this. They totally freaked me out when the kids were little and learning to crawl! A friend of ours actually had her little boy fall through her stairs once and break his arm. They're also kind of a pain to sweep and vacuum as the dust falls two stories to the basement. But that's a good chore for our kiddos these days.
Another good job for my kids these days is taking out the trash.
(I can't believe I just took photos of my trash cans.) Germans take recycling seriously, and my main concern about posting this photo is that someone is going to point out something that is in the wrong trash can. The blue can is for paper. The large part of our white can is for packaging, also known as the yellow or Gelber Sack. The small part of our white can is actual trash, or the Black can, or Restabfall. Our outside Black can is a little lager than a standard US kitchen trash can and gets picked up once every two weeks. That was really tough when we had two kids in diapers!
There is one other trash in my kitchen, not pictured, which is our brown trash, or compost-ables. I keep that in a bowl on the kitchen counter and it gets emptied daily. We also have to recycle our glass bottles and jars at large recycling containers which can be found around town. Our nearest ones are near the kids' bus stop so I usually take the glass recycling when I got to meet them at the bus in the afternoon. About ten times everyday I still answer the question, "which trash does this go in?" And I'm sure I don't always get it right.
There's more differences in the kitchen!
First of all German water is HARD. Like, way harder than any water in America. It is safe to drink, but it really doesn't taste great (at our house anyway) and Germans don't usually drink it. Instead they drink bottled flat or seltzer water. We use a Culligan water cooler at home, partially for great tasting, cold water in the Summer, partially because the bottles are large and reused by the company, and partially because we can get fluoridated water which we think is important for our kids' teeth.
Because of our very hard water, we also have to use these additives in our dishwasher- Spezial-Salz and Klarspüler. We tried not using these and our glasses not only got a calcium film on them, they actually got scratched up by the hard water minerals! Crazy.
Another difference in the kitchen is our tiny fridge.
This is it, you guys. Most German kitchens also have an itty-bitty freezer, but ours does not. To compensate, we have an American size fridge/freezer combo in our basement. (On loan from the US Army, it is small for an American fridge, but much larger than this.) Germans typically grocery shop every day or two and only for the items they will be eating in that time frame, so this would be totally sufficient for them. But for our family of 6, it is ridiculous. I do like how it blends into the cupboards though.
Door handles were another one of the items that Charlotte added to this list.
All of the doors in Germany basically look like this. There aren't any round door knobs like in America. In fact, Charlotte said, "Those round things? I don't understand those." (Reverse culture shock is a real thing and our kids are going to have it bad when we move next year!)
Laundry is another thing that is different!
In Georgia I had a top loading, high capacity, washer and dryer. In Germany, we have these tiny little front loaders. The washer, on the right, takes a really long time. The shortest cycle I have found is 60 minutes... but we've timed it and it lies, it actually takes closer to 90 minutes. And the dryer, on the left, is a condensing dryer. So it doesn't vent to outside, but the water gets heated and condenses and I empty the condensing tank after each load. It also makes the laundry room crazy hot and humid, so I tilt open the window whenever I am doing laundry. These are also Army loaners- which it is nice that we don't have to buy a set while we live here. But with our large family, the laundry needs to be almost constantly in motion. It takes us a week to catch up after a vacation or illness. And to wash a larger comforter, I need to take it to the laundromat on base or have it dry cleaned.
And finally, German homes don't have closets. They just don't do that.
Instead, people have Schranks or wardrobes. Our house came with this one large Schrank already in the bedroom next to the master bedroom so we decided to treat this room like a closet. Most people don't have that luxury of space, so they have small Schranks in each bedroom. This Schrank holds the hanging clothes for our entire family. Yeah. My personal "hanging clothes space" is approximately 18-24 inches. So how do we deal with that? We have dressers in each room, and we embrace the capsule wardrobe ideal. It's different, but it works.
That's kind of a great mantra for living in a different country actually. Yes it is different, but if it works, than just go with it. I am thankful for the time we've had to live in Europe and how it has opened us up to different ways of living, eating, traveling, and embracing life. It has made us more flexible, resilient, and has brought us closer as a family. I kinda hope this won't be our last experience with living abroad... but I am totally gearing up for some time in the good old US of A too!
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