Reply #12: Gosh, thanks

[Squeech]

but I believe that the one thing you can always find in Brazil is somebody to do your laundry. It's the traditional employment for the women that live in the favelas (hillside shantytowns). Typical apartments have a special laundry room, essentially an extra bathroom with a special sink, the front of which is serrated like a washboard, and larger apartments have an extra bedroom (maid's quarters) right next to that laundry room.

This may be changing as Brazil's getting more of a middle class. There are satellite dishes in the favelas nowadays. And there are now laundromats in residential neighborhoods, at least some of them.

Our condo BTW is tiny, not even 200 square feet. There's a bedroom in which a standard double bed barely leaves you room to walk around, a bathroom with a stall shower (a tub wouldn't fit), and the rest of it is a living/dining area with a kitchenette alcove. The special laundry sink is at the innermost end of the kitchenette. It's a great place for a college kid (and I've met UFES students living in the building) or starter home for newlyweds (which is what's likely to happen to it next, as Mrs. Squeech's ex's niece is planning to get married this year, and we told her they could live there while saving up for their own place), but it would pose real difficulties to unrelated people who weren't already intimate.