Several years ago, I learned about the existence of mini-washing machines. I thought they were super cool. I had spent several years volunteering with refugees, and one issue with the apartments they lived in was the lack of washer and drier hookups. To avoid the cost and hassle of going to a laundromat, many would wash their clothes in the bathtub, though this was for some reason against the apartment rules. I believe some of these mini-washing machines have a connection that actually hooks up to a shower head, though. I couldn’t help but think that as long as you had a way to adequately dry your clothes, it would be easy enough to hide one of these devices in your apartment and use as necessary.
Anybody who has gone to college is probably familiar with mini fridges, but mini dish washers also exist. If you look into the world of RVing, you’ll find there is a mini version of pretty much every appliance you can imagine.
I think that’s awesome.
See, I think we sometimes get spoiled by appliances. They can be expensive, they take up quite a bit of room, and they are difficult to transport. But we often don’t need them, at least not in the capacity we typically find them. Most fridge space is wasted, for example. I have experienced this both living alone and with roommates, but if I bothered to limit myself to food I’m actually going to eat, sauces I actually use, etc., I wouldn’t have half the things I store in the fridge. People mostly store things in the fridge because the space exists, not because of any specific efficiency of usage. And I mean, if you have the space, why not use it?
And honestly, I think freezer space is more useful than fridge space. In theory, foods in the fridge are not designed to last very long because the temperature prevents them from lasting longer. It therefore stands to reason that fridges don’t function well for bulk storage of perishable foods, and to get full use out of a fridge would require you to be eating very large quantities of food. I, personally, have never filled a fridge with food that didn’t largely go bad within a week or two’s time, which leads me to question it’s utility, as a factor of size, for a single person. The ideal standard combo fridge has a larger freezer space than fridge space, IMO, but for whatever reason, the opposite is usually true.
The stove in this house has one burner that doesn’t work right, so we agreed to simply not use that burner. It’s been 3 years now and this hasn’t really affected me negatively at all (though the DIYer in me almost wants to fix it). It kind of leads me to believe that the vast majority of cooking can be done with one large burner and one small burner. On the extremely rare occasion you need another, you might be able to procure a portable single burner.
Returning to washers, I find I tend to separate my laundry into smaller batches anyway. Most clothes make it into one bundle, but I tend to separate the socks because they get dirtier and need a more rigorous wash, and I also tend to separate the nylon/outdoor clothes, since I don’t use dryer sheets in the drier, and separating these tremendously cuts down on the static that develops on the other clothes. I do on rare occasions wash the comforter on my bed, which is bulky, but it occurs to me that some sweat equity might accomplish this in a bathtub.
The real advantage of smaller appliances is that they force you to think economically. I honestly kind of like those washer/dryer combos where the dryer is mounted on top, since you save a lot of space this way. Stuff like this just gets you to think about efficiency and how much you really need.
But the downside is, unless you are actually planning to live in an RV, most of these smaller appliances don’t give you a tremendous advantage.
For example, downsizing appliances in a house like what I live in wouldn’t accomplish anything, because there’s plenty of space to accommodate them. Heck, the washer and dryer I used in my apartment have been sitting unused in the basement for years now, sitting beside the actual washer and dryer that get used. It’s also true that smaller housing arrangements don’t necessarily save much money, since the demand is for a place to live in general, not whether you shaved 20 square feet off your arrangement by using mini appliances or not.
Of course, it might work out in other situations. The cheapest apartments tend to lack space and hookups for washers and dryers, and sometimes lack dish washers, too. Certain basement living arrangements will lack full kitchen facilities. In these situations, use of a mini-washer, mini-dish washer, or single burner stove (assuming adequate ventilation) might make a lot of sense, enabling you to live very cheaply.
(Preferring clothes with high nylon content might even be part of your drying solution)
But there’s also the question of longevity. More companies are competing in the full-size appliance market, thus driving competition for quality up and price down at these sizes. Having a mini-refrigerator that is half the capacity as a normal size refrigerator doesn’t mean it costs half as much, either. I’ve also heard rumor that RV appliances can actually be expensive because they lack economies of scale. It is also perhaps much harder to find deals on used mini appliances, since far fewer of them exist, whereas you have a whole fleet of used, normal-size appliances to choose from at your local ReStore or its equivalent.
This is one of those situations in which culture and its standards have a large impact on your life and you basically have to strategize around it. Most domiciles are built to accommodate these appliances, so I think using their mini versions is only particularly useful when retrofitting older, smaller houses, or adopting less-traditional living means as a housing strategy.