Life is better with a broomstick: creative solutions to appliance problems in Rome

 

Italian ingenuity often has to extend to making appliances work.  Here a broom handle is used to keep the oven on.

But it wasn't the only use we found for broom handles.

Below, the only way we found to keep the washing machine door shut:

Needless to say neither the stove (which was in a friend's apartment) nor the washing machine would work without these tricks.

And finally, maybe not crucial - unless you don't want to put dishes away with one hand while the other holds the cabinet door open - our solution to a sky drain door that wouldn't stay up:

We are fans of the sky drain - Italians way of drying dishes. We wish American kitchen designers would use them, though Americans are addicted to electric dishwashers.

We don't think we're dissing Italian products by saying that often design trumps utility, though these aren't the coolest designs we've seen. Just routine appliances that don't quite work.

  BTW, don't expect the Airbnb host to tell you how to solve these problems - just look for the broomstick in the closet.

Dianne

Keeping Rome Clean: Part 2

Rome has a few street-sweeping machines, the kind with rotating brushes that tidy up near the curbs. But because automobiles normally take up both sides of the streets, most of the sweeping is done by hand, with long-handled, curved brooms of the sort favored by the Wicked Witch of the East, tools descended from the Dark Ages. We've never tried one--it doesn't seem as if they can be bought in stores--so we can only assume that the odd-looking things are functional for the outdoor work they do, that the curve of the broom makes it possible to get around and under the city's cars and trucks, many of which haven't been moved for months, as the owners fret about never finding another parking place.

In recent years, the storied straw version of the street broom has been replaced with green plastic. The march of progress will doubtless trouble the traditionalists, but those with an artistic bent may have a different view. We like the dash of color in the line-up above, where brooms in a row await their sweepers. Bill