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

The Best in Italian technology: the Sky Drain

A standard sky drain.

We wouldn't recommend most Italian home technology.  The washing machines are small and take hours to do their work; bathroom showers are served by a variety of weird contraptions; plugs come in a bewildering variety of configurations and are often loose and unreliable. 

Even skydrains are vulnerable to breakdowns.  This
one needed to be propped open with a pasta roller

We are, however, fond of one particular piece of kitchen equipment.  It's not electric, and the mechanics are simple.  This little low-tech gem sits above the sink.  When the cover is down, it looks like any cupboard.  But water goes straight down into the (hopefully) sink.  It's essentially a drain, a descendant, we like to think, of the first and greatest Roman drains: the cloaca maxima (#40 in RST's  Top 40). 

This drain just drains dishes.  Because of its position, we call it the "sky drain."  Sky drains are important because Roman kitchens are small and dishwashers few.  Simple. Convenient.  Efficient.  Nice.

Bill