Wednesday Word: American

Any guesses what this word of the day means in the UK?

I'll give you a hint. These are not American-style refrigerators:

Any guesses now?

Yes, American=big. Except when it means American, of course. I mean, when people ask if we're American, I don't think it's because we're big, I think it's because we talk funny (although at least a few of us are, in fact, also quite big...)  But if you're referring to an appliance, a car, or a drink, we've discovered that the descriptive term "American" or "American-style" usually means it's much bigger than the normal British equivalent.

This should give all of us Americans reason to pause, I think. Sometimes we probably don't need the sizes we've become accustomed to. We could probably almost always survive with smaller-sized soft drinks. I suspect many of us could manage with smaller cars. The refrigerators are maybe a different story. We got a big, American-style chest freezer so I could make more food from scratch, which in the end probably saves resources since I buy very little food packaging and we don't go out much. But that's only worth it because I cook almost constantly and make everything from scratch.

In general, being here has made me rethink many of the things I thought were necessities. While I got a big chest freezer, for example, we have a small washer that doubles as a condenser dryer. It is smaller than most American ones (although the stackable set we had in our city condo was pretty small!) Anyway, the machine takes a long time, especially if we use the dryer, maybe three times as long as what we're used to. Perhaps it's less efficient because it takes longer, but I will say this: we do much less laundry here because I'm much more conscious about washing things when they're dirty instead of just automatically dumping everything in the hamper. (Don't worry, we still wash our socks every day :)) And we hang stuff to dry way more than we did in America. It's taken some getting used to, but I like it and I suspect some of the new habits will stay with me even if we ever head back to that big country across the pond! I think people here have fewer clothes on average than in America, too. (Probably in part because there are no closets...) But everyone looks perfectly nice! 

There are certainly things about America that are bigger and consequently better (two-way roads come immediately to mind.) But I've enjoyed questioning and evaluating my habits and expectations. In some cases, we've found the non-American sizes to be much better. (I will at some point dedicate an entire post to trash--I cannot believe how much less waste I produce here!)