Unpractical Things Americans Are Attached To, According to My European Husband

Some things take getting used to but some are just nonsense

Plenty of things struck my husband as odd when he moved from Denmark to the U.S. three years ago. Some of those he got used to and even accepted (tipping!) but some he will never understand, let alone adopt.

Here are a few of those.

Paper everywhere

“America is drowning in paper,” my Danish husband noticed as soon as we moved here from the almost-paperless Denmark where everything runs on apps and paper mail is almost obsolete.

Every week, we open our mailbox to retrieve a pile of unnecessary catalogs, brochures, and unsolicited letters. I had to explain to my husband that that plastic box on the floor labeled “USPS” was for collecting junk mail. He was baffled:

“The mailman brings you junk and then gives you a bucket to put it in?”

“Yes, it’s more a box though,” I nodded.

“And then he takes all the junk back?” he continued.

“I guess so,” I shrugged, never having considered what happens to all of it.

He stared at me.

“That makes very little sense,” my husband complained.

“And a whole lot of waste!” he concluded.

But that is America for you: things often make very little sense.

My local nail salon only accepted cash and checks as a form of payment. There are still restaurants, even here in Los Angeles, where you can only pay cash. Our daughter’s summer camp did the entire registration through mail and checks. Many agencies still require paper applications.

And don’t get my husband started on medical offices.

“You could do a lot of good for this country by just eliminating all the time, waste, and stress that goes into filling out those medical forms!” he exclaimed.

If only the solutions were that easy.

Weird showers

“Where’s the normal shower?” my husband stared at our new bathroom set-up in his first American home in Brooklyn.

“What do you mean?” I asked him, but I already knew the answer. Europeans prefer hand-held showers, which are considered much easier to use for washing both yourself and shower walls.

My husband tried to rotate our shower head, but it didn’t budge.

I defended the system: “You move and angle your body under the shower instead of angling the shower around your body.”

He laughed at my attempt.

“It’s like moving paper under a pencil to draw instead of moving the pencil,” my husband answered and went to look for a hand-held shower head on Amazon. Since then, we take it everywhere we move.

Indeed, given that most American kitchen faucets come with a pull-out hose these days, it’s strange that our showers still don’t.

Good luck washing your dog, your kid, or yourself for that matter.

Carpeting

This one baffles me as much as it baffles my husband. Why do most Americans prefer carpeting?

In minimalism and design-obsessed Denmark, wood is the choice of material for both furniture and floors.

Yet in all-year-round-warm Los Angeles our townhouse is half-covered with carpeting. With a toddler and two dogs (one of them a puppy), it’s a never-ending battle to keep the floors clean.

“Carpeting is gross. End of story,” my husband concluded.

Indeed, the amount of time I spend cleaning our floors, and failing to keep the stains out, could be spent doing something (anything!) pleasant.

Not to mention those with allergies, cats, dogs, kids, and wine glasses. It’s a losing battle.

“Why do Americans insist on difficult solutions? It would be so much easier to have easy-maintenance floors,” my husband wondered.

Can anyone explain why in modern-day America, where so many alternatives and affordable flooring options exist, people still insist on having carpeting? We are at a loss here.

Weird bedding

My husband called me today from the hotel where he was staying alone and complained about a bad night of sleep. The reason: “horrible bedding.”

I’ve heard this one so many times.

The bedding solution in Europe is simple: a duvet, also known as a blanket, which is inserted into a duvet cover. The latter is used daily, then washed regularly and put back on. It keeps things simple and clean.

The American layering system has never appealed to me personally. And to my husband, it’s a nightmare.

Luckily, our European bedding needs are solved by a trip to IKEA. Yet, when it comes to traveling, my husband inevitably gets frustrated with hotel beds.

“This is disgusting,” he complained during our first road trip, as he lifted a blanket (or was it a comforter?) covering the flat sheet he was supposed to sleep under.

“Do you think they ever wash these?” he asked, hoping I’d say yes.

I explained that the idea was to use the always-clean flat sheet to protect yourself against the washed-sometimes-comforter on top. This only works in theory, of course. In reality, you wake up with the sheet on the floor and the comforter on your face. Yikes!

Sure enough, my husband spent last night shivering under nothing but a single sheet, after losing his battle with American bedding layers.

It doesn’t have to be this complicated.

“The U.S. needs to catch up with some modern-day solutions,” my husband laughed when I complained of junk mailbox disappearance creating drama (and litter) in our complex.

The “mail bucket” was later replaced but it got me thinking: