THE BRITISH SINK

When Nomad Papa and I moved into our rental house here in the UK, we thought something was wrong with the kitchen sink. Every time we turned on the hot water, it would jet out a mega-strong stream that rebounded off the bottom of the sink and soaked the front of our shirts. 30 seconds later, the jet would trickle down to individual drops and we’d have to turn it back on again. Repeat this 32 times and we’d have our dishes done.

Eventually we hit our limit and we trucked it on over to the local hardware store to get an aerator attachment to fit over the end. We knew exactly what the piece of hardware would look like, having had them on every other sink we had ever had in our lives.

Lo and behold, this aerator does NOT exist here. Our options were to buy an expensive faucet and do a complete replacement, or buy a cheap apron and suck it up until our lease runs out in October. You can guess which route we chose.

But we remained completely perplexed by the absence of the aerator. What were British people doing? How was everyone else not annoyed by this? Was this part of their standard hygiene? Were they washing dishes shirtless and scrubbing their armpits between plates? To say our minds were boggled would be an understatement.

Then one day it finally came to us. That random plastic bucket under the sink was not there to hold cleaning supplies. We were supposed to run water into it and and let our dishes all soak together and then rinse them off under the slightly less demonic cold water. (Ugh, I get the shivers just thinking about how gross this is.)

All of this is just one little piece of why the British sink makes me want to shoot myself on a daily basis. You can see more about what annoys me here on my latest vlog: