Frausters are brazen now and will alter checks from your mailbox. That's for the old school people who still write checks and buy stamps. Online payments or bill pay from ur bank account is easiest and cheapest way to pay the bills.
Mail tampering does happen occasionally, because people are idiots. But yeah, it's definitely not *worth* it, because you can get in way more trouble than it's worth. If you're going to commit a felony and risk the consequences, there are far more appealing and potentially lucrative ways to do it, than reading your neighbor's mail. Frankly, there are more appealing and lucrative forms of completely legal unskilled labor, like working a cash register.
As an American, I think it's funny you call the recliner a cinema chair. Where I'm from, recliners were standard in homes when I was growing up, and reclining chairs at the movies only became a thing about 10 years ago lol.
you're lucky. in my area, only the super expensive imax theatre has chairs like that. everything else is one step up from stadium seats- annoying fixed plastic chairs with cushions. The better the theatre, the more cushion.
The recliner as a standalone chair has been around since at least the 1970s. Reclining seats in couches are newer. I don't remember seeing them before ~20 years ago.
Well, recliners aren't standard in the way that the house comes with them installed like a kitchen sink. But yeah, it's rather common that people have at least one recliner in the house, or even couches that can recline.
Recliners are a trademark of older Midwest homes. My in-laws each had one and I thought they were the laziest people, especially because they were obese. My mother’s first impression of my mother in law was the woman sitting on the recliner with her fat naked feet up in the air and she didn’t even get up to meet my mom. Ugh!
The laundry room with a washer and dryer! I discovered that when I moved to the States. I designed mine in this house and it is huge so I can have the dog and cat food, cat litter, a sink, an upright freezer, a clothe line for delicates, room to store laundry baskets, brooms, detergents and shelves and more shelves. It is one of the best investment I made. I do like the French windows better because they have shutters that you can actually use. Here, they are only decorations. They are great to for insolation, privacy and protection. I also have fallen in love with recliners. Were I to move back to Europe, I would take them with me. And finally, the size of the houses, and the rooms inside. I love the feeling of openness in large rooms. Same with cars which, to my delight, are fully automatic. This European loves the American life style.
I am a janitor at a school in southern Texas. 104 degrees with heavy humidity. For some reason, the school district decided it would be a great idea to save electricity by turning the AC off in the schools in our town. Because ‘no one will be there anyway during the summers ’. Ummm/ you have a group of employees doing labor intensive work all summer. It gets about 80 degrees in the classrooms WITH added humidity. Makes it reallllyyy hard to be a peppy efficient employee. 🥵
@@CinderellaRaptured333and with modern buildings being sealed so tightly how mold is a major problem when A/C and it's dehumidifying functions are turned off.
@@tsiefhtes Yeah. We have those clocks that have the time/date/temp/humidity information on them. Our particular school feels very humid when the AC is off. I’m assuming the builders cut corners to save money, bc it’s not insulated well at all! It’s an older school. One day, the air in the classroom went out. The teacher was irritable and complaining that it was SO humid and hot! Upwards of 80 degrees according to the clock. They fixed it for her. I told her, “Yeah- imagine the whole school feeling like this! Because we work in this all summer.” She couldn’t believe it. She was like, there’s no way I could do that! That’s so sad they make yall work without cooler air like that.
@@CinderellaRaptured333They did that in some districts here in North Carolina last year resulting in mold so bad school was delayed by weeks and cost millions in remediation. Administrators are often quite stupid.
Yeah, not everyone has a reclining sofa, but a lot of people at least have a reclining chair. I don't - not enough room for one where I live now - but my dad has a recliner that also lifts up in the back to help him stand up. Full disclosure though, he's over 80 so I doubt he'd be able to get out of a stuffed chair without the help.
@lynnw7155 every movie theater I've been in in the past 5-10 years has had recliners for seats. I used to think the same thing, but they take out entire rows of seats to put them in. It cuts the seating by 50-75%, but it is so much better. No more getting your seat kicked or not being able to see over a tall person.
We dont need them, most days its too cold to open the windows so on average I get maybe 10 houseflies come in through the window a year. Maybe a wasp or two. Don't really get mosquitos here.
@@pete56never had to add a screen any house I've seen it's standard. Order new windows and they automatically come with screens. Went to England and there were flies in our hotel room cause they had the windows open.
I love seeing this UK guy reacting so excitedly to things we just take for granted here in the US. He put a smile on my face with his cheerful enthusiasm.
Those rubbish disposal systems are unbelievably polluting! Imagine all the stuff that gets to the waste water treatment plants and has to be filtered out of the water instead of just being put in the compost or the “green bin” which is collected by the municipality and ecologically disposed off!
I worked as a rural postman in one of the poorest and most crime-ridden parts of my state, for a brief time only. One of the things I learned, extremely quickly, is that no one, not even the craziest junky, messes with the mail. For two main reasons: They deliver the checks. And they have the oldest, and most fuck around and find out police force, founded in 1775 by Ben Franklin.
It's also worth realizing that these days, the blue mail drop boxes are becoming a rarity, so your option for mailing letters is either you mailbox or taking it to an actual post office.
I have a screened-in porch to enjoy the summer nights without bugs plus you enjoy the feeling that you're outdoors. Watching fireflies (we call it lightnin' bugs in the South) glow in the dark is like you're in space with the stars.
I spent a summer in Nashville and couldn't believe the clouds of fireflies. I asked a girlfriend if she knew why there were so many there, and I wondered what they eat. She replied, "What do farflies eat? I dunno...their innards are so tiny..." I loved that chick for saying that!
No...the mailman does not have a key. It's unlocked, but considering that messing with someones mail within their mailbox is a federal crime, it's not a big risk, at least where I live.
It depends on your neighborhood. In newer developments you’ll often see a set of mailboxes on a big post that also contains two or three package boxes and an outgoing mail slot. You have as assigned box and use a key to,open it. Of course the mail carrier has the master key to open the entire box. We have that kind of set up in our development, there’s a mail box on every block, mounted on the sidewalk at the edge of the curb so the mail carrier can fill the boxes and collect outgoing mail without leaving their vehicle, unless the package you’re receiving is too large for one if the package boxes and then they leave it on your front porch.
Mine actually does have a lock. There's a slot for the mail to be put in once the door is opened. You need the key to open it to get the mail out. Anything too big to fit through the slot, is brought to the house.
Window screens are a very fine mesh. They used to be made of thin wire, but modern ones are made of plastic fibers. They are absolutely essential to keep out flying insects.
They missed, probably one of the bigger conveniences of America versus Europe, is the laundry room. Typically in Europe, the washer dryer combo machine is either in the bathroom or the kitchen. There are a lot of dedicated laundry rooms in bigger homes in the US. Or just a dedicated laundry closet in the hallways.
My wish is to design a large, multi-functional laundry room with large storage closets for Christmas decor, extra China sets and glassware, gift wrapping table, folding area. I do not understand why builders put the laundry 🧺 in the scary basement, (think of the scene with Kevin McAllister in Home Alone) or near the kitchen. I don’t keep my clothes in the kitchen. A laundry should be near the bedrooms. Hats off to all those poor women who had to schlepp heavy laundry down and then back up two flights of stairs. Whether here in the U.S., or in Europe, we have to begin to think more creatively and practically about homes and design. And bathrooms should not be near dining areas. Just sayin’.
@@user-es9mb8wi3m We are a retired couple and when we downsized, there was no laundry at all. So we took the second bedroom and made it a laundry room/walk-in closet.
@@TallulahB58 Good move, Tallulah. The importance of the laundry in the function of a home is grossly underestimated. It seems always to be an afterthought, the smallest, often windowless room in most cases. Often just a closet. Space is needed for moving around, folding, hanging clothing, and storage. It should be a pretty, pleasant room in which to work because we spend quite a bit of time in there. Enjoy your lovely laundry room.
this lady is honestly living in her own world, she’s quite clearly from a middle class or upper class family. In the town i live in there’s a population of about 3,000 and it’s not “normal” to have a lake house, or central air, to have a garbage disposal and most people where i live don’t even have one car per person.
I live in a city. There is no central air, garbage disposals are rare, we don't have 1 car per person, and most of us don't have ice makers or sink sprayers. We DO have window screens, so theres that.
That is the truth. There needs to be a disclaimer that while a lot of homes have the amenities & upgrades she enumerates, it is by no means every home.
Yeah a lake home is not something we all have, I would consider that more upper class. I live in a suburb of Houston and we have the central air/heat, garbage disposal and a pool. However we only have one car each. I'm not sure who would have more than one unless they were a car collector?!
I've never had a garbage disposal, but we have three cars for three people and we do have air conditioning. Not upper middle class, more on the lower end of middle. You can't walk anywhere here in winter so need everyone to have a car.
No kidding! I consider our family of four to be firmly middle class in a large Midwestern town. We just became a two car family. We don't have an ice maker. We have one TV. Our windows don't stay open without being propped. We only run the AC from May-Sept, heat from Nov-Feb, and I don't allow the AC to be more than 10 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Yesterday it was 98, so our house was 88. As far as I'm concerned, we've got it made Rich people never seem to know that they're rich. Haha
She lives in a more upper middle class area. That is not how a lot of Americans live. Lake front properties are rare and very expensive. Owning 6 TVs is a lot, 3 is more like it. The two vehicles in the driveway are usually a sedan and a truck, and if you have a third vehicle, mostly due to having young drivers in the family over the age of 16. Her parents live in a very large house, and most Americans live in smaller square foot homes.The recliners are very common for living rooms.
@@Phoenix_DarkMoon It depends, midwesterners used to buy or build these lakefront properties as vacation homes that would be shared and funded by extended family. I'm middleclass in michigan and my extended family does this still with a lakefront home that was built by my great grandfather in the 1950's or 60's...
Multiple cars is definitely not the norm... Her parents are probably upper middle class. My parents have an extra vehicle. It's a truck for hauling things.
Thank you. I came here to say this is not the typical home here. Also, the size of the yard. Most houses would be lucky to have half that size depending on the age. The newer houses might be lucky to have 1/8 an acre.
A lot of people don't realize this, but we used to have a serious malaria problem in the US. Window screens were a counter to this and they've stayed around ever since. The thing about multiple cars per person is a bit overblown in this video. Most American homes have at most one car per person over 16. The only people I know who have more than one car per person are those who have a business, so they'll have a car for regular use, and a van or pick-up for their business.
This is basically it. A nuclear family will typically have two cars if they can afford it, one for the husband to get to work, and one for the mother with kids to run errands, get groceries, etc. If there are more cars, it is because there is a 16+ who needs to get to school or work. Cars are expensive!
Car people often have more cars than drivers. It has nothing to do with having a business. For example, we have 5 vehicles. One is a motorcycle that only I ride, a truck that we only use when we need to do truck stuff, and a Jeep that I am slowly restoring after an engine fire. My wife and I both have small 4 door cars we daily drive for work etc. We are not in anywhere near the financial position it appears this family in the video is in, 3 of our vehicles were very nearly "free". My daily was an inheritance, the bike was $300, and the Jeep was free.
WHOLE REASON CDC invented and placed in ATLANTA was mainly Malaria. People also forget that is why the South had a lot of naturally immune African slaves as time went on and less Irish, the susceptible indentured servants. Malaria killed the whites so the ones with money, sent their kids away from South during the summers. Plantations developed this way due to insects and climate people were used to too. It wasn't just racism, it was measurable levels of immunity and people always forget this because most don't study entomology, virology and epigenetics. I used to work at the CDC so I appreciate the facts that built it and how things like DDT, even though had lots of bad to it, changed the landscape and potential of the South, especially GA, SC and Florida.
Everyone’s talking about the screens on the windows. I’M still trying to wrap my head round HIM trying to wrap his head round the fact that you can send letters or small packages from your mailbox! 🤣
In the US, most people don't have more than one car for a person unless they have specific needs for it, for example work trucks, farmer's tractors and crop harvesters, or full size vans for large families. The primary exception to this are people who repair and resell cars for a hobby or as part of their job. I know a mechanic who works for the state who also owns 11 cars, and fixes them up on the side. Also, you always want to run the water while running the garbage disposal because it helps pulverize the food waste.
My coworker took a vacation to Florida and had never seen the screened enclosures surrounding swimming pools in people's backyards. She told me, "there's a whole room of screened walls and ceiling connected to the houses". Having lived in Florida for 30 years, I know why they are built. As soon as the summer sun dips in the sky, around 4pm, the mosquitoes come out. You would never use your pool after 4pm unless you want to get eaten alive. The screened enclosure also protects kids from the neighborhood coming in to swim in your pool. If the kid drowns, it's the homeowner's fault even if the kid was trespassing. The enclosure also keeps debris from trees falling into your pool and making it dirty. And lastly, it helps to keep alligators and other wildlife from using your pool as a lake. The one thing I didn't like about the enclosure is that the pool water temp is colder with the screens vs without. However on hot, humid, summer days the cold water feels nice!
I lived in Florida for a year and I've never seen a screen completely surrounding a pool. My apartment did have a screened patio though. That was really nice.
Something I miss with new houses in America.... porches and patios. Now some houses will have one or the other or they will have a wooden deck. My grandmother's old house had both a porch out front with rocking chairs and out back was a large patio with a fire pit. During the day (mostly on Sundays) we'd sit out front drinking ice tea and marvel at her flower garden. At night we'd move to the back patio and tell stories around the fire pit. I loved the patio, it looked out over a grassy field with a few apple trees and her huge vegetable garden. Although when it's harvest season the size of that vegetable garden was painful. The grandkids would spend the day picking vegetables while the mothers were cleaning and prepping them, and grandma was manning the stove canning all the vegetables. I know, tell me you're Gen X without saying you're Gen X. lol
It depends on the builder, my development was built seventeen years ago and when you picked out your floor plan, you also had a choice of three different variations of the exterior but they all included covered porches. Also a large patio was included in the back of your house.
I still see porches and patios but it's like the front and back yards, it's getting smaller. But you're right, you can see it slowly being less common than it once was.
My last house only had a front stoop and a concrete patio out back. When we got our new home a couple of years ago...I finally got my front and back porches. Love them!
Her mother is upper class daughter living abroad in a house on a lake (she said mid-west where you can get bigger houses then on the east or west coast specially cities)
This lady from an upper middle class family. A lot of Americans don’t have power recliners, 4 tvs, a lake view, or 2 cars per person. But most homes do have an ice maker, screened windows, a/c and probably a garbage disposal.
This...except the garbage disposal...i can only think of a few houses iv been in that had one, so for that i feel like its not as common as she's making it sound
I bought power recliners 4y ago took a puppy and a toddler to destroy them and me regret spending 5k on them .will go cheaper next time as for fancing as european living in US ...love my privacy would love to have less front yard and more backyard ...got a pool i'm also lots in gardening so yeah would if possible extend my backyard
As others have noted, it's worth noting that this appears to be a wealthy family. Some families do have several cars to a family, but usually only very wealthy people have more than one car per person. That kitchen is also quite large, although it is relatively common in newer homes to have that detachable faucet and a garbage disposal. In American apartments built before those things were common, it's not unusual to have neither of those things. That view is also a wealthy people view. What's funny is that recliners have been somewhat common in America for a while, so when cinemas started to have them my thought was "wow this is a recliner just like my grandma's," not "my grandma's house is just like a cinema chair."
I was thinking that too about the recliners. It’s only been in the last decade that we have gotten those kinds of cinema chairs and they are only in one of the rooms at the movies while the other 14 or so have the old straight back ones. We have had recliners in homes since I was a little kid (and before.) It’s funny how that’s backwards.
i would mostly agree, but it feels like buying broken down "project" cars and fixing them up is becoming more common these days with how messed up car prices have become.
I used to live in a one vehicle per occupant home, but then one of the occupants was no more. One vehicle is used for transporting big things, but isn't very fuel efficient. The other is fuel efficient with 60 miles of electric range. The electric range is enough for 95% of my driving. Round trips to the airport are outside the range, but not that frequent.
I have never been to a theater with a full reclining seat. Even the newly built on just has seats that tilt back a little. I live in Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.
Not only do screens let in air but also the sounds of nature. Air conditioning is not just for cooling but removing humidity which helps with the feeling of comfort.
That depends on the region. Where I live, the HVAC system has a humidifier that adds moisture to the air. Other places have de-humidifiers, and some places have both.
I live somewhere very dry, so swamp coolers reign supreme. I actually struggle with a dry cough sometimes because of systems that remove humidity when it's already kind of dry after growing up with the swamp cooler... Edit: I COULD'VE SWORN I MADE SURE IT SAID LIVE, NOT LOVE, BUT!
@@JanMaynz the one thing I don't like very much about swamp coolers is the smell, and it wasn't just one particular home, it was a common thing to smell that 'swamp cooler' smell everywhere that used them. That being said, I'd happily deal with the stink of swamp coolers if the only alternative was living without screens on my windows.... I can't cope with having mosquitoes, june bugs, and other unsavory critters getting into my home
We have those large mailboxes on the streets too, usually in busy areas. The pickup hours are posted there, too. Different vehicles have different uses too. I have a little car for most of my commuting, but I also inherited a pickup which is useful for moving things around. I use it more than I'd ever think.
US mail carrier here.. We do collect outgoing mail from mailboxes and offer "package pickup". Items too large for the mailbox can be scheduled for pick up at any location at their address, ie front porch, garage, inside (no, we don't go into their house.. we knock and they bring it out!! Lol). Customers go online to set up a pick up, then the carriers get print outs in the morning telling us which address, # of outgoing parcel(s) & where we can find them on site. Also, mail theft is a BIG no-no in the US and, as stated by others, is a federal offense, with up to 5 years in FEDERAL prison and $5,000 fine, for each offense. They don't take it lightly either, having federal postal inspectors, which have higher authority than local or state police agencies (and yes, they do carry firearms). It's kinda scary when they come to your office because you know it's probably theft, drugs or weapons that brought them there.
I wish the druggies and criminals in my area would respect the mail laws. It's so bad that the blue mailboxes are gone now, except in front of post offices, but they get broken into, also. You have to actually give your outgoing mail to an employee in the post office now. Ugh
9:34 - Reclining sofas/couches are quite common in the US. However, a lot of them use a manual lever, rather than an electric motor. Then your legs push it down when you get up. She said "when I was a kid", but they still sell non-electric ones, because they're a LOT cheaper, and also a lot lighter to move around than the electric ones.
Exactly! I bought a new reclining love seat last year and bought a manual one… because of all the things you said, but also I don’t want a higher draw on my electricity.
A sofa with motorized recliners on either end can easily go $2400 USD and up (depending on additional frills). Add in real leather and you're looking at around $5000. :D
Whoever owns this house has MONEY! They have the newest and nicest amenities. This is the typical home for someone in upper middle class or wealthy. Living on a lake with that view is costly! But, yes most homes have yards typically decent in size, screened windows, garbage disposals, ice makers, and at least a car per person or at least one for mom and one for dad.
That house is HUGE! And, yeah, I noticed that massive back yard right on the lake! Yeah, as I mentioned in a previous comment, this girl doesn't realize how privileged she is... talking like practically everyone has it that good... Absolutely clueless.
Those things don’t make them wealthy. Comfortable, yes. But not wealthy. Working hard for the things you have doesn’t make you privileged or clueless. Get a grip.
Idk, I feel like msot do the things she used in the kitchen, (fridge and sink) just LOOK nice, they are like every other sink and fridge just a little more fancy. Like I have a fridge that has a smaller space for a taller drawer and a deeper freezer. That’s basically the only difference. I think you’re just looking for reasons atp.
@@aleatharhea I dunno. We have a 2500 sq.ft. four bedroom home, with a nice open kitchen and most everything she showed (save for only two cars and two old TVs), and it cost less than 240k. Of course, we're out in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, but it suits us. Mostly it all depends on where one lives, and what sacrifices one is willing to make (such as moving out to the middle of nowhere). Our income is pretty minimal, too - we paid for the house by selling off the old one, and out here tax is very low and bills are likewise low. It's all about location and how you want to live.
Aside from the typical bells and whistles for most U.S. houses, construction means and methods differ across the U.S. due to the environment. Just hear in Texas, you have the Chihuahuan desert of El Paso in the west and the costal “swamp” of Houston in the east. Hence, building is different. Not to mention - equidistant north from El Paso - you have alpine environs of Colorado.
As a former postal worker. In class they told us the Office of the Postmaster General Inspector is the 2nd highest police force in the country. The only people that outrank them in civilian service is the secret service. Stealing/putting anything in a mailbox that is not your is a felony. They will find you if they want to. The mailbox on each property is TECHNICALLY the federal government's property. You are technically only allowed to replace it with certain boxes but the mailman usually lets it slide if they like you.
IIRC, that's mostly because mail that's going from one side of the country to the other via truck passes through hundreds of jursidictions. The result is that in order to figure out where it was stolen, the Postmaster Inspector General has to have that level of authority.
@@tonette11000 murder is illegal and people still kill lol if you want you can file a report on continued theft and they will eventually get around to you. I wasn't in the dept but it is all true. I'm with UPS now and have done Amazon both stressed DAILY DO NOT PUT IT IN THE MAILBOX. mailmen that care will take the packages back to the post office and the UPS driver will get them next time he goes to drop off a bulk of packages along with a report on where and a warning of a fine/escalation if it keeps happening.
I am from Florida and could not imagine a life without AC or window screens. The heat, humidity, and insane number of bugs here, will literally kill you. Growing up we always had at least three vehicles. Dad wanted a spare in case one was broken, so he was never late to work, & we couldn't get to school. I have continued that thought process into my life with children. Public transportation is not readily available in the country or rural areas. Most US houses at least have a tv in the main living room and bedrooms, but it is not uncommon to have them in a workout room, kitchen, or back porch for parties. We are not rich, nor do we have the massive house or amazing view as this poster, but we have all the items listed.
In my neighborhood in the US the mailboxes are a bank of lock boxes. Each house gets assigned a number and given a key to their box. If there's a package there are package bins where they will secure the package and deposit the key in your mailbox. To send letters, there is a specific slot that is communal that people can put their letters in, but no one besides the post office has the key to open that.
Your reactions crack me up! 69 year old American here. I lived in Brazil for 4 years where there were no screens. But where we lived, there weren't a lot of bugs either. We closed all the windows at 5 PM before the mosquitoes were out. But in the U.S., even when I was a child and we were poor, there were always screens. We lived in a place that was too cold for bugs and still had screens! :) But I agree with one of the comments, the house in the video belongs to someone relatively wealthy. Double ice makers, 6 TV's, more than one car per person and that beautiful view are not the usual in the U.S.
@@alanlight7740if you haven’t noticed the middle class is shrinking rapidly in America. So even if they are Upper middle class that’s makes them very well of in todays economy compared to the AVERAGE American.
The building code in the US requires screens in certain rooms. That doesn't mean they won't get damaged over time. I remember kitchens being one required room to keep flies away from food preparation areas.
That house is definitely upper middle class, tho from the size of their driveway it could be in a rural area. Having a gorgeous view like that is not the norm in the US, however, even in rural areas.
@@alanlight7740Agreed. You don't necessarily have to be rich to have all these things but as far as the beautiful view goes, you may not be wealthy but you will probably be spending the bulk of your savings on it lol.
Yes, most of these things are standard in American homes: window screens, ice makers, garbage disposals. We don’t have a recliner, but my parents have had recliners as long as I can remember. They’re so comfortable, you can literally sleep in them.
I literally stayed in a recliner at my parents house for a week after I'd had abdominal surgery, and wasn't supposed to sleep completely laying down, or on my side like I usually do. They are definitely comfortable enough for sleeping, (pretty much only left it for the bathroom for about 4 days, until I was ready to start moving around)
@@ringringbananarchy Tbh I sleep in recliner pretty much every single night for the last year… I tend to get pretty bad migraines if I lay down flat or rather if I have migraine (which I get pretty often) they get much worse if I lay down completely flat. So I started sleeping in my recliner whenever I had a migraine, which progressed into me just sleeping in the recliner every night now. Lol
The window screen is a metal or plastic mesh (with tiny tiny holes) that lets air through but not bugs. The mesh is mounted on a rail that is affixed just behind the actual window on the bottom in it's own track. It can be pulled out for repairs or to clean the windows. LOVE SCREENS. Also, we have SCREEN DOORS that have mesh instead of glass that are mounted in the door jam about 3 inches in front of the outside door so you can open the door and bugs not come in. The handle can also be locked to help prevent instrusion.
FYI: Window screens are typically mounted in frames that can be slid up and down or removed altogether, so people can escape out the window in the event of a house fire.
You can also get pet screen, which is a thicker black plastic, but you can still see through it very well, and it keeps cats from ripping the screens to shreds, which any cat will do if you let them get a chance at a regular screen window. We had it on our porch outside in Virginia. Costs more but absolutely worth it.
6:42 The garbage/trash disposal in the kitchen sink is NOT for ALL of the trash. It's for the crumbs and small pieces of food that are left in the sink after hand-washing the dishes, but not for bones or large chunks of food; if the piece of food world take up most of the area in the bowl of a spoon, it goes into the trash can. If you don't run the disposal every day, do run it at least once per week, and ALWAYS run the disposal with the hot water running in the sink. These tips were told to me by the garbage disposal installer.
Some people have a second fridge or freezer in their garage for extra food storage. We also have laundry rooms with washers, dryers, ( Humid areas takes forever to dry fabric and towels) and small sinks to hand wash items. Most of us with a garage have remote controlled openers, so we drive up, push the button, after the door rolls up, we drive in and close the door. The new energy saving in houses it to have cooling and heating "zones", so you only warm or cool the part of the house you're using; at night only the bedroom zones stay on. In the rest of the house, it's off. Dry desert areas have water systems for the yard/ garden that adjust the amount of water, depending on the weather. On rainy days it turns off.
Ah, my neighborhood doesn’t have such wonderful garages. They’re small, unattached, single car with old doors, lucky if they open at all. Side door access, they’re usually storage/wood shop/fix-it spaces. Everyone parks in the driveway, sucks in the winter and the summer. Considering brick homes hold heat and those with them particularly hate 100°+ summers, swamp coolers are barely better than a box fan, and A/C can be a life or death decision to have. Sprinkler systems take maintenance over the years, but lawns can do surprisingly well if you don’t water them. Grass is actually hard to kill, can water once a month even in the heat if there’s a drought (or if they’re diverting water to waste in the desert to play climate games, as they are in our city). Rocksliding one’s yard (killing every living thing and dumping fkng rocks in one’s yard is a HIDEOUS trend apparently promoted by the morons at HGTV programming, programming, programming…as is mulch-dumping one’s yard. It does NOTHING for the environment, gives NO refuge or habitat of any kind to birds, bees and butterflies, but even a crappy half-dead lawn DOES. It will revive in the spring on its own, and in autumn, even if it suffers in the extreme heat. Our ecosystem will thank people for just leaving their lawns with grass alone. And for those who do rockslide or mulch their yards and think they’re helping with adding a few plants, well, better than only rocks &/or mulch, but it is still ugly. And it doesn’t provide nearly the habitat for birds, bees and butterflies. Ffs, ground cover that takes over is even better, or bulbs that spread over time. Squirrels come to eat a few, and it impacts nothing. Looks the same, makes them happy, exposes worms for the birds, butterflies and bees come visit (they never bother me, they only react when they are attacked by a screaming giant waving his or her hands, who in their view is trying to kill them for merely going to work for the day, keeping our food system pollinated. I talk to them and they indeed seem to very much know who acknowledges and appreciates them. I’ll sit with them and they’ll even hover right in from of me, a foot anyway, and turn to me for long enough to say hi, then turn to fly away. Anyway, they’re needed, and younger generations are indoors anyway. Might as well help the critters by not being so stupid. But I digress. That’s one think Brits are known for, their lovely, lovely gardens. We admire them for that. 💕🇬🇧
A lot of homes in the US are starting to build small kitchens in their garages too. Things more common with immigrant families who cook food with stronger smells so that their clothes don’t smell. I’m Caribbean and I’m tempted to do the same to avoid smelling like fried seafood and curry every day. We already have an extra fridge and freezer in there so why not add some cupboards and a small electric stove.
I was thinking the same thing. I'm an American in the mid-west. I do not own a TV anymore but growing up we had two, one was small black and white and the other color, then we migrated to two color. Only have one car per person. Now scenic view out the windows, just neighbor's' homes. That type of sink faucet is about $100 or more, and I've never seen a sink that large in anyone's home in my life! Also, I've never lived in a home with that much space. Definitely not a typical American home unless you are the upper middle class.
@@Shirayuuki1 My 3/2 2000 square ft house on a just under 1 acre lake lot in rural MN costs half what I paid for my winter home in S Florida that has a teeny lot and is 1500 sq ft 3/2 on a drainage pond they call a lake. My MN house is on a 1000 acre lake. But in FL the gators are free ha ha ha.
How cute his reactions are! I’m 62, I redid my kitchen. I have the garbage disposal, a very large and deep hand hammered copper sink, a full size refrigerator with a big ice maker, and I have a 24” beverage refrigerator too. I live alone, and have two cars. I have whole house air conditioning, a whole house automatic generator, and a 2200 square foot house, with two recliners in my living room. I worked my ass off for all of it, and I’m happy and grateful for what I have. I wish every good person had the same too.
While many homes do have garbage disposals, if they are older homes (and many homes are in my area) they often do NOT have garbage disposals. Personally, I think they are not ideal. We should be composting our food waste, and not just throw it down the drain. A head of lettuce in a landfill takes 50 years to degrade. In a compost pile it takes about two weeks.
@@Kammy44 it’s minimal what goes down my disposal. I live on 9 acres. I throw everything out for the animals. It’s just scrapings from plates mostly. I feed the woodland creatures.
I live in Arizona, as we have mild winter here, and we love our swimming pools during the summertime, we also have TV in our patio/outdoor living room.
The one big thing she left out is the laundry room. We have an entire room for the washer and dryer, which are 2 separate units. In the UK, I believe there's usually a washer/dryer in the actual kitchen, and it's only one unit.
Not all homes in America either. Where I live its more common to have your washer/dryer in the basement or bathroom if you haver enough rom. Also there is a 50/50 split between the separate and 1 unit washer/dryer.
@@keegansmetanko3755 Certainly. I've seen those all as well. Those are also things you don't often see in the UK. Looking at the house in this video, I would shocked if it didn't have a laundry room, but I digress. I'm more specifically saying that in the US, you don't see washer/dryer units under the kitchen counter in the same location you'd find a dishwasher.
I noticed that as well. I would definitely need a dryer for clothes. I don’t think that’s real common in the UK. Comment please of it is common to have a dryer in the house.
@@keegansmetanko3755 - a one unit piece of stacking washer dryer - or a one unit piece that you put clothes into once and it washes and dries? . . . . No moving clothes into a dryer (whether stand alone or a stacking unit)
I think a key to U.S. consumerism is that we spend a lot of time and income on 'removing' daily annoyances so that we can be more productive as people. Many of these same conveniences one can also find in our work places. When it comes to multiple vehicles, it largely depends on the part of the country one resides. In Northern winters it's safer to drive an SUV or truck (snow, ice.) When the 90F summers arrive it's less costly to drive a sedan or commuter (fuel.) Many in the UK and Europe don't realize how drastic our weather changes through the seasons here. Especially in the North.
@@jeffmockus5400I live in Minnesota. I have never had 4wheel drive, but rather front wheel drive. I have driven through snow storms safely and watched the idiots with 4wheel drive blast past me and then see them in the ditch. As far as I am concerned, 4wheel drive just gets you in the ditch that much faster and more efficiently! (Also, I know when it is better to just stay home and wait for the plows to come through.)
@@nancykaminski8600 Correct. 4wd is definitely better than a 2wd pickup, which is useless in snow because there's no weight over the rear wheels, and a rwd car is better than a rwd/2wd pickup. Front wheel drive is the best in snow. Example: BIG, N50/15 rear tires, a posi rear and a couple hundred pounds of weight in the trunk of a '69 Dodge Coronet will out drive any 2wd pickup in snow. This I know for sure. I learned this in the Poconos (East Stroudsburg), as I drove past my friend in his Dodge pickup, which was - really - in a ditch. (He did it twice that year.) Don't even get me started on going up snowy hills.
I just recalled, many years ago my family had a relative visit from the U.K. She was amazed how big everything was, especially the cars. The first time she stopped by to visit my parents and me, my mother ushered her to our back yard. She looked astonished and asked if the entire back yard belonged to us. My parents yard wasn’t an especially large yard, but my mother worked hard every spring planting flowers and making everything beautiful. The thing that shocked my dads cousin the most was a few minutes into her visit while she was sitting enjoying the garden, was a squirrel who ran and hopped off a tree, standing on the grass looking at her. She jumped up, screamed a little, and ran back in the house. My mother and I had to work hard to get her into the yard again. She wanted to know what the wild animal was.
I don't know why she would be scared of a squirrel, have you ever seen the size of the rabbits in the UK??? They are the size of dogs! And I don't mean a Chihuahua.
@@SubeTheWenchyes I thought that was strange. There are plenty of squirrels in the UK They just look a little different from American squirrels but you can still clearly tell they are squirrels
Depends on where you are in the US for some of these things. Like, we don't have an ice maker in our fridge/freezer combo because our fridge isn't connected to the water supply. For the same reason we don't have a garbage disposal - we're on well water and septic (not town water or sewer). So our "grey water" needs to be water - not food scraps. We have only two TVs (that work - there is a third, but it is in the garage and needs fixing). We do have air conditioning and reclining loveseats. And screens for the windows to keep the bugs out when it is nice enough to open the windows.
Funniest mailbox quote I just came up with: "The key to my mailbox is a federal appointment. You're either appointed as the mailman, or appointed a jail sentence."
One thing about air conditioning is that the entire contiguous part of the USA is more southerly than London. Things get pretty warm in the summer, even in the northernmost, snowiest, cities.
Yeah, I am from Pennsylvania at the northernmost part, and the one year we hit a US record for cold temperature, but during the summer it was one of our hottest summers too like 98 f
I love watching videos like this because it helps me stay humble and appreciate America. I'm in Florida. Everyday is beautiful and life is very good. I love seeing people's faces when they see things we take for granted over here. It reminds me NOT to take things for granted. I hope you're able to visit us one day!
Used to be made of fine steel wire. I remember seeing rusty screens as a kid in older houses. Modern screens are generally a fiberglass mesh, but aluminum mesh can be found as well.
I'm amazed you haven't heard of window screens. It's my understanding that most homes have them in the USA. In the spring and fall, I LOVE to sleep with the windows open (with just the window screens) and listen to the relaxing sounds of the night. The best sleep ever. 🙌
I love that now. But, when I was a kid, my grandma lived in a rural area. So, there was almost no light outside at night. And she didn’t have air conditioning. So, in the summer she had the windows open with the screen down and you couldn’t see anything outside. But, you could hear all the crickets and other critters, and it would remind me of Friday the 13th and scare the shit out of me. She had the back of the sofa against the window, which made it 1000 times worse.
To be honest, as much fun it is watching him when he sees something he never saw before, it is just as much fun reading comments from people who think all other countries have what we do. The US is a very spoiled country. I think we all don't appreciate it because we are used to it.
@@cajbaf You're right. There are many things we have in the US that are advanced and we're spoiled. I guess it's surprising since I think we've had screens in our homes for as long as I've been alive. I'm 50 years old. So I thought screens were an old and simple invention. England has money. Why haven't they started selling screens (or AC) in their society? It's not like they don't have the means to. These inventions have been around for a long time. I feel bad that they are so hot bc they don't have AC. But then, they can't even open their windows to get air bc bugs come in. Their society has the means to bring these things over there. I'm curious why they haven't, after all this time? England is not an under-developed country.
You can install a fence around your yard if you wish. There are many types available. Some you can see through, and some you cannot. Those are known as a privacy fence. You can have them installed or have them delivered or go to stores like Home Depot, or Lowes and pick it up if you own a pickup truck and install it yourself.
That was one nice ass fawkin fridge! LOL, we have a pretty decent Samsung fridge, side-by-side fridge doors up top, freezer on bottom that's split into 2 separate freezers with 2 doors, so that general style of fridge is pretty common and accessible these days. But that one in the video specifically is a damn rocket ship😂
The recliner is a standard in most American homes. It's typically associated with dad coming home, grabbing a beer, and lounging in his easy chair after a hard day's work.
I have a recliner that I sleep in because if I sleep in a bed, my back hurts... but my mom has a bed that lifts head and feet. I can't remember what it's called, but it's similar to a hospital bed.... though last time my nephew visited Mom, she gave him her room, so she slept in the den that has two hand lever recliners, and she said it was the best sleep in her life. The den also has a pull out bed in the couch..... which she felt was to time consuming to open and close every night...
We have post office drop boxes, but if you have an individual mail box, the mailman will pick up the letters you want to send. You see this arrangement in less densely populated areas like the suburbs or the rural areas. Yes, someone can steal your mail, but getting into someone else's mail or mailbox is a federal offense.
We put the flag up every day on our mailbox by the road. We leave a nice cold bottle of water for our letter carriers. They love it and every now and then they thank us for thinking of them, especially when it's hot outside.
My refrigerator make three sizes of ice. I didn't notice it until I got it home. One is a round ball for cocktails, the other is small little squares and then the one on the door where they are standard cubes and you can select the crushed ice function.
Recliners are very common brother, so are fine mesh screens for windows, and no the mail man does not have a key to our mailboxes (it's a federal crime to steal mail, you get more jail time for that than assault or any other kind of theft)
Community mailboxes are getting more commonly installed in new subdivisions and yes, the mailman has a key to the back which opens all the boxes. Then each resident has a key to their individual box. Still has a slot for outgoing mail though.
@@loverlyredhead I grew up in the 80s, and our neighborhood had community mailboxes for each end of the block. It was usually my job when I got home from school to walk the dog & get the mail. Every apartment I've lived in (including current one) has had community mailboxes as well
I have a summer car, good fuel efficiency and fun to drive, and a winter SUV, because my car stranded me in the snow four times the first winter I owned it. Now if the weather permits in the winter I will drive the car and if there's ice or snow it's the SUV.
UK expat here, move to the USA (North Carolina) relocated through my work. Money goes a very long way here, specifically NC. First, land and property are cheap (getting more expensive) but I have a moderate home, just under 3000sq ft, in ground pool, 4 bedrooms older home I’ve been modernizing on just under half an acre. Cost me less than a terrace home in Aldershot, 2 bedroom that was about 1000sq ft. It’s crazy living here because money goes a long way compared to the UK. Oh and the interest you pay on your home, is tax deductible, everyone does their taxes like a self employed person does in the UK, so you can deduct working from home space, medical mileage etc.. I miss family, my heart will always be with the UK, but tropical summers, cold winters and wonderful spring and fall weather can’t be beat. Southerns are fantastic people too and the English accent, goes a long way too! Did I mention air conditioning in the homes? Much love to you all xx
I think it was Reagan who once said that if you think things are expensive now, wait until they're "free". The reason things are less expensive here in the US is largely because taxes are so much lower. With every product and service being taxed at every stage of its production, from raw materials all the way up to the final product, it all adds up, so that the consumer really has no idea how many taxes they are indirectly paying, as they are rolled into sale prices at every stage. All that "free" healthcare and other services provided to Europeans come with a hidden cost, drastically reducing their real income, relative to Americans.
His mind is gonna blow when he finds out you can get sinks that you dont need to touch. I can just wave my hand in front of the sink and it will turn on and off. Is is needed? No. Is it great? YES.
To be fair...this is clearly the home of some very well-to-do people. This IS NOT the typical American home, though several features are typical. The garbage disposal, the window screens, air conditioning, and the recliner are fairly ubiquitous. More than one car per person, 5-6 TVs, and a lakefront view are not.
Lakefront view is the only one that is rare...everyone else has all of the things on the list. Most everyones mailboxes on Long Island are on the house next to the front door
Recyliner chairs and sofas are in most every home. Some have one car for each of person and a bigger one to tow the camper or some have an old "station" car to take to the train station to go to work by train and leave the junk car at the station.
Wow, mindblowing that people have no screens on the windows! Yikes the bugs would get in, if I moved to a country without them I would have them put in.
I am single - 2 cars: 1) smart car to commute and run errands 2) pick up truck - for horses care and haul large items. Smaller, well kept, non-fenced front yard with fenced in back yard with my veggie garden and fruit trees (and soon to have chickens!) and a place for the dog to run. Kitchen - meh, about the same, frige not so fancy but lots of ice (have to have special filter for water because ours is 'hard'). No tv in my house - just one computer screen Screens on all windows and - not mentioned - 'storm' or 'screened' doors too! And yeah, most have recliners too. My house is considered 'smaller' even though it has 3 bed and 2 baths (1700 sq ft) Not fancy like the one shown. I also live in sw us - so air conditioner is mandatory! Like your video!
The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was 40.3°C (104.5°F), and it hits that every single year where I live. Two summers ago it got up to 47.7°C (118°F) where I live. This is the reason that we have A/C everywhere. Though I used to live in Seattle, WA and in-home A/C was less common.
Middle Class American here - I would say this is a very affluent family that is NOT the norm in the US. I don't know anyone who has multiple cars per person. Typically one car per adult but I have known some who share one car. I've never seen a refrigerator with two icemakers and that looks like a very upscale fridge. Many of the homes I've lived in don't have garbage disposals, including the one I live in now. Where I live many people don't have a/c (but with climate change more and more people are getting it - my neighbors tend to have window units for one room). I have one television. Many people I know don't have a tv at all anymore because they watch what they want to on their laptops or phones or they aren't into tv. That view is extraordinary, but not all homes are like that. Again, pretty upscale there. We do tend to have front yards but often they have hedges or short fences around them. Regarding mail boxes, typically neighbors don't steal from them but there are theft rings that steal mail and peoples' identities. More and more mailboxes are replaced with locking varieties and the postal person has a universal key that opens them. (And I've heard of the post person's key being stolen too!).
For sure that family house looks rich. And even my parents are middle class. We have an because it would be insane not to on the East Coast. We don’t have a garbage disposal (the previous house we did) Our yards are generally open, I have seen some with front fences in the more bad areas.
My fridge looks like that and I’m far from affluent. The top ice maker is technically part of the door ice maker. That’s where the ice comes from for the door and you just have to pull it out if you want the ice in there
As an American, I just have to say that I want to live in this woman’s America, too! Her parents are definitely upper middle class, possibly upper class, &/or have worked hard & invested wisely to enjoy their retirement in such a place. Gorgeous home, gorgeous view, why the need for 4 cars & that many TVs, I have no idea. I could see having a car for each driver plus an extra if one of the daily cars was being serviced, since public transportation is a joke (at least in my area) so a car is necessary to go anywhere. Or if someone just wanted a fun car for weekend drives. (If we ever hit the lotto, that would be my hubby!) We are in our mid-40s, a middle of the middle class family, soon to be empty nesters in the next couple of years. We purposely bought a smaller home (under 1300 square feet, small for modern suburbia) knowing our kids wouldn’t live with us forever, & we didn’t want to move again once we’d finally bought a house after 10 years of renting. Our backyard is fenced, we don’t have a garbage disposal (we have a septic tank, IYKYK), no ice maker but I buy 10 lb bags of crunchy ice to keep in our upright freezer, we own one car per licensed driver (our kids worked hard for & bought their own cars). We have always had 2 TVs so the kids didn’t have to watch what we watched if they didn’t want to, & vice versa. We have never allowed TVs in the bedroom, just personal preference, though smart phones now let you watch TV in every room. And we love our recliners - though we don’t like the electric ones, we prefer the old school lever style lifts - less to break & repair! If we ever were to move to Europe, I’ll remember to import our recliners! We have that style mailbox, but we live in an older neighborhood. I receive mail here but I don’t mail stuff from my box - for safety, I take it to the post office. Most of the neighborhoods around us have community mailboxes located on a centrally located street, with dozens of small square individually keyed boxes. This makes it quicker & easier for the postal worker to deliver mail, vs stopping at every house. My neighborhood alone has over 400 houses, & it’s one of the smallest neighborhoods in our area. It’s funny how non-Americans think Americans live, & vice versa. I enjoy watching home shows from here & abroad, & I’m always amazed at how different homes are just within America. We have a single story basic ranch style house, common in our area (Texas). I watch shows from the northeast with families in multi story homes & brownstones/townhomes, using vertical space to build because there’s not enough land to build out, so they have to go up. It’s a lifestyle I cannot imagine, living on 3-4 floors. (Two stories are common here.) Then I see folks in other countries, often Asia, residing in micro apartments & sharing a communal bathroom. This world is an incredible place, so full of diversity. It’s hard to paint all of a country with a broad brush.
I can see one car per person and a work truck or something that fits a specific purpose, not 3 of the same SUV and a 4-door car. I too wish I had so much disposable income that I could have doubles of my cars.
In Texas you need the SUV or Truck(dual cab) to go to the ranch and or your costal home. The family car to go out to concerts or restaurants and the sports car or sedan to go to work or go out on date nite. Then you need a vehicle at the ranch and your costal home just in case for other family members. Then u have to talk about the golf cart or similar vehicle to get around on the ranch or in the costal home. So yeah 4-8 vehicles. Now don’t get me started on the need for and EV if you want to look like your concerned about the environment. Then there is also the class B van to travel to other cities across the US plus you need your electric bikes and in some cases another vehicle your pulling with you van. No wonder I gotta work till I am hundred. Thanks goodness education debt is getting erased. 😂
@@paulgarcia621lol!!! I guess if I had more than one house, I’d need all of those cars! 😂 We have my crossover SUV for our family, & hubby has an old Ford Ranger for his daily commuter. That’s the extent of our vehicle collection. If we go out somewhere fancy, we just give my SUV a good scrub & vacuum, & enjoy our night out. I do have various family that have farms & ranches. And yes, they do have work trucks specifically for that purpose. But they’re old beaters, nothing new or fancy. Who wants to drive something nice through the cactus & mesquite trees?!?
Having air conditioning is a survival necessity in south Louisiana and Mississippi. I remember my dad putting in a window unit in our house in 1965. We lived in a rented "shotgun" house in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans (the part that was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina). I think we were one of the first families in our circle to have a/c in our house -- and we were dirt poor at that time. I now live in a 1 acre lot in a subdivision where most of us don't have fences around our entire property -- only the area closest to the back of the house to keep our pets in. It's also against the zoning in a lot of suburban areas to have fences in the front of houses in the US.
OK so there are a few things I would like to clarify as an American. 1. MOST people DON’T have more than one car per person. It usually is a car for each adult. There are occasions where there might be a company car/truck or a utility or fun (sporty) vehicle. 2. The faucet in the sink, that is a restaurant style faucet and not common, most are the kind that have a lever you raise lower, turn left or right for hot or cold water. That was a nice expensive one. Most of the other stuff is accurate but on the nicer/pricier side of things. That is a nice house on a lake or river. I have to laugh about the insulated cups. That is pretty bad but not far off the mark.
Adding to that, comments on air conditioning. She seemed to imply that everyone has it everywhere in the US, but actually there are places where it is fairly common not to have it, because it doesn't get that hot. For example: at high altitude (northern Rocky Mountains), at high latitude (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, costal Washington, Alaska, Maine), and Hawaii (because it is always 70-85 degrees, so if 85 isn't too hot for you, then you don't need it).
Outside of the "cities" Most people where I live have alease 3 vehicles and people that live where it snows heavly or the roads ice over bad will have 3 or 4 vehicles. Most people tend to have two daily drivers that get good gas mileage and then they will have an SUV or truck. Some people may even have a "work truck" that they use to haul tools and stuff in or to drive to work that's located on rough roads. Then you have people that live in places that get heavy snow or icy roads. These people will have a "junker" a vehicle meant to be driven in the snowy roads and if you slide off the road and damage it is doesn't matter because its your old vehicle or you bought it for 1k to 4k.
Yeah we keep a third vehicle that isn’t the best on gas usage, but is handy for when all the kids want to go somewhere or we have a lot of luggage. If you have the space to park it, it’s not that $$ to keep your last vehicle when they’re offering peanuts to trade it in.
it's pretty common to have 1 car for each adult and then one additional car, like i live in nyc so we don't have any cars but i grew up the suburbs and it's pretty typical to have 1 car for husband to drive to work, 1 car for wife to drive to work, and then a third car that's either older or like is a big SUV that's not super practical as a day to day vehicle but has specialized uses
A few things to say I live in West Virginia,USA , I live alone, I have a truck, car and a camper van, and several motorcycles. I don’t have a fence, I do have air conditioning, but no TV. I have screens on my windows, they also make screens that fit below the opened upper windows that are expandable, pop it in stretch it out to fit, then lower the upper window onto the frame of the screen. No ice maker, no disposal, an acre of yard , with a creek.
christ on a cracker what you need so many vehicles for? how?? assuming several motorcycles is at least three thats six vehicles!! lmao i'm barely scraping by being able to afford my POS hyundai lol i can't imagine going out and bying a truck, a van, and a few motorcycles
The key word is you live "alone" so you have more disposable income. If you don't have some of the things on this list, it's by choice bc you can definitely afford them 😉
@GameChanger597 , I live alone, single income household. It can be nice, but other times it can be difficult. No one to share bills or maintenance with. Also no one to share the housework and repairs with. So it can be a good thing or a challenging thing.
Yes, stealing someone’s mail is a federal offense, not just petty theft. When I still live at home with my parents, my father would open up my mail. I would tell him it was a federal offense. So, he would say “I don’t care, it’s coming to my house”! The kicker is, he once worked for the post office!😂😂😂
I will send my kids a You've Got Mail MSG. Then a picture of it if it looks important. Like tax return/owed.Then they'll let me know if they're coming over soon or to open it and let them know what it is. If its just junk mail, I still give it all to them to do with what they want. Cuz. It's their mail. They still kinda get a kick out of opening it all. Except maybe the, you still owe this much. Lol
Yes, technically you could have reported him and gotten him in big trouble. Man, that is such a rude and disrespectful thing for your dad to do! I would never open someone else's mail, kid or no.
@@1024lafyeah some people can just be way too nosey… my moms husband (don’t like referring to him as my stepdad lol) opens other peoples mail a lot. He’s a very nosey person
The mail one only applies to mail boxes. Those aren't nearly as common as people think, due to movies. Literally my entire city doesn't have them at single homes (non-apartments). Nearly everyone here has a letterbox as well. Like, a little box hanging next to the door, and some even have those slots in the door like you might have seen in movies, too. But we have a secondary thing to send letters. My house has slot with a hinged little door, but it's IN THE WALL next to the door. To it slides down the little cutout on the inside of the wall. Then above that slot on the outside, we have a clip, you know, like you press down on the little ends, and the clip opens, like you'd use to close up a bag or something? We have a metal one that we put letters in that we want to mail. The postman knows that's what it's for and takes the mail from it to send out. Some homes here have 2 letter boxes. Where it's just an actual box attached to the house next to the door, with a lid you can open, and they will be labeled which one is for incoming, and which is for outgoing. And yes, technically your neighbors COULD steal the mail, but it's not common, because it's a federal crime, which is mandatory prison time. And mail theft like that, can easily be a 5 year prison sentence. Enough to stop any idea from most people. Fences are eh..Some do some don't. Cars though..I can explain that. It's called having an extra just in case. You're telling me if your car suddenly has a problem, and you work 2 cities over (sometimes further here, my stepdad used to work over an hour drive away), you're just gonna walk? Or hope you can catch the bus? Nah, have a backup car. For example, like you said "one for mom one for dad", what if mom is at work and dad's car has a sudden problem and he needs to get to work? You have an extra car for that. The reason we all have AC, is because the US generally gets WAY hotter than the UK. Like A LOT hotter. You guys were just recently complaining about it being a record high of the mid friggin 80s (30 for you guys). That's literally the LOW for the ENTIRE SUMMER here. Sometimes that even drags on into autumn, and starts late spring. This entire summer, I'm in the northern part of the US where it's nowhere near as hot as it CAN get, and it's constantly in the 90s (32-37 for you), and even for a week was around 100 (37.7 to you). And a couple years ago, it got 114 (45.5 for you), for a day. And again that's in the NORTH of the US. Literally Washington, the state on the top left of the US map. You can't go higher than the states at the top. Can you image those days in the south half where it's HOTTER!? Screw that. Not having AC can mean literally life and death for many people. On the window, yet. that is netting. It's a mesh netting in which the holes are small enough that no bugs can get through it. With the ice, I can't say 100% for sure, but I don't think she's right. I think that's just her mom lol Every single person I've ever met that has a fridge with a built in ice machine like that, does NOT make a separate thing of ice. It's not needed. They get the ice from the ice machine part. No need to make a whole big tub of it like that. We don't have one in this house, so we HAVE to make ice the old fashioned way, in the trays in the freezer, but not a single person I know does that, that has the built in ice machine.
Multiple cars per person isn't actually very common. Unless someone has a particular job that requires them to have a work vehicle that they're not allowed to use for personal errands or they live on a farm or something. (Farm truck vs personal car for town.) Also my fridge only has one ice maker. That lady has a pretty fancy fridge. Reclining couches are pretty common. Not always electrified, though.
I never saw a fridge with 2 ice makers. I never even had one. I did have a garbage disposal in the kitchen remodeled myself and always had a dishwasher and laundry room. Now that I have moved to a senior apartment I have no dishwasher and laundry room is down down the hall - one on each floor. Still don't have an ice maker.
Recliners are very common, electric reclining sofas aren't. Garbage disposals are a mixed blessing. Yes, they chew up the garbage, but they tend to clog up your drain. My wife and I each have one car each and one TV between us. We each have a laptop and a tablet, so why would we need more TV sets? Above all, that house is far from typical. Around where I live, that would cost a good $700,000.
In rural areas, if you want to work, you NEED a car because there is no public transportation. Some small towns have a very local bus route, but you pretty much need a car to get to the bus stops, which defeats the purpose. In a typical household, the parents have a car each for their jobs and the teenaged kids have a car so they can go to school or work after school.
@@silverkyre I moved from a bigger city to a more quiet rural one and yeah I can absolutely see a need for having an extra hauler if you live in a small town or further out in farm country but don't want to drive a 10 mpg, gas guzzler when you don't need to carry heavy loads.
@dpark189 yeah exactly. We loge in the city but my mom has an old truck and uses all the time to move bigger things. But if she isn't using for that she has a car to drive around. She used to also have a van but she sold it.
We get 120 degree summers in my area (49 for you) and I don't have ac. This is what I have to do daily: I have a window fan in a window in the front of the house, and at night I open a window in my bedroom, then turn on the window fan to do an air exchange until 10am, when the temps outside go over 80 degrees (27 for you). Them I close up the house and pray for the best until it cools down outside around 7pm. BUT I have block out curtains or closed blinds on most windows, plus I have a pergola giving partial shade to the south and west side of the house. We also have tons of insulation and tile floors.
The "window screens" are a fine wire mesh. It lets the breeze through but all the flying creepy crawlies stay OUT. Some houses also have "screen doors" . It is an outer door that is basically a frame with the same fine wire mesh attached, it function is the same as the window screens. So on moderate temp days that is too warm for heating but not hot enough for air con, we can open the doors and windows and get fresh air flow with out all the "live stock" moving in.
To add to this, not everyone has air conditioning (I live in the north and it’s common to not have whole-house AC or even window/smaller AC units), so letting in a breeze through the doors and windows is great
My mailbox is down a hill that can get snowy and icy in the winter. I use 'informed delivery' from the post office. They scan the outside of my mail and post it on the site. I can see if I've had any deliveries or if what's in the box is important. That saves me from going out in -5 weather just to learn I've no mail, or it's all advertising. The recliners are typical and well-known as 'dad's chair.' Even my little 3 yr old grandson has his own mini-recliner.
@@Chris-fn4df Depends on the federal judicial district you live in as all federal crimes, just like state crimes, are charged and prosecuted based on the discretion of the prosecutor. I've witnessed many people go to federal prison or at least have their day in court for stealing low-value Amazon packages on porches while sitting through federal trials in a district court that had more aggressive prosecution overall. Other federal prosecutors elsewhere might've let them go. Because of the prevalence of Ring and other doorbell cameras, prosecution of mail theft is getting easier to prove so federal prosecutors have less excuses to not enforce. But there will always be prosecutors who decide not to enforce any type of crime. It's their call. But that's nothing unique to mail theft.
@@Tijuanabill let me catch someone taking anything out my mailbox. I have a surprise for them. The only person that should take mail from the box is the carrier or myself.
We live on a farm in Indiana and we have a beautiful view here but not every place in the US is the same as in this video. For instance, we only have 2 TVs in our home. And as far as the multiple vehicles go, some people have work trucks and then maybe a car they use for personal transportation. Also some people have cars that they rarely drive and for pleasure like a convertible or they have vintage car and they take them to car shows. There could be multiple reasons. Yes we all love our ice here and our A/C. It can get extremely hot and humid here and especially in parts of the southern US it can get miserable in the summer time. But growing up we didn’t have A/C. It was a fan in the window but we always had window screens. 😊
Multiple cars per person could be due to the work a person does, or a hobby a person does on the weekends. For instance, a guy might need a truck for work, but uses a car to pick up a date. Or someone might need a truck to pull their boat but uses a car that is cheaper on gas to drive around town. And yes, recliners (what you called a cinema chair) are very common in the US.
I was going to say, for the average couple without kids, it's not unusual to see two cars, sometimes three if one is really fuel efficient, or a truck. The other thing is that if there are kids who are of driving age (or even if they're adults living at home with their parents) they might (kids), or will (adults living with parents), have their own cars.
and also not everyone trades in a car, they might also get passed down to a kid and then when that kid is grown up and gets their own car they just end up keeping the old one since they already have a newer car and have no reason to trade it in to a dealer.
Yep, and I know people that have a car for work commuting, a truck for the occasions when they need to haul stuff and/or pull a trailer, and a minivan for when they want to take the whole family somewhere.
American here: 1. Yep - neighbors can access your mailbox (when they look like the one in the vid), but it's a federal offense (illegal nationally). There are lock box style for shared spaces like apartments. 2. No fences in front is definitely normal for suburban life. The back yard is usually fenced but it's a toss whether the fence is tall or short - really depends on the neighbors and area. 3. Multiple cars is a thing but I wouldn't say that's a rule. My parents have 2 cars for 2 people, my wife and I have 2 cars for 2 people, my sis has 1 car for 2 people. FWIW I'm a car nut, too. 4. AC is a NEED where I live in the southern US. I hear Europeans complain about temperatures and when I do the conversion to °F it becomes apparent we are in extremely different climates. For example, in London the mean daily max in July is 23.6°C while our mean daily max in January is 27.1°C. 5. We do have window screens, but reference #4 to get a feel for how often we open those windows. Other parts of the country are much more temperate, though, so use windows a lot. 6. We do have a sink like what she's showing but that's usually only in high end kitchens (we splurged on our kitchen, but have a modest house). We do not have a waste disposal. 7. Ice is real and I can confirm that in France you'll get 1 piece of ice if you ask and none if you don't. This is extremely accurate. I do have an ice tray with a scoop for the ice, but we do not have a door ice maker. 8. Recliners are very common, but we don't have any. We like the Stressless which I suppose is more European in design. My in-laws use recliners extensively and my parents have a chair and a couch that both recline. 9. We have one TV. I don't know what kind of rich person BS she's peddling. We can't have basements here due to water level, so there's no man cave in our house and I never grew up with a TV in the bedroom so et voila we don't have one either. We do, however, have multiple computers so maybe that offsets the TV requirement. As an aside, I live in a city that is too small to be considered big but too big to be considered small. Essentially what that means is we get decent amenities but still get to have a yard and good sized housing. Our house is on the smaller side here but it would be considered massive by French standards. That and our bathrooms are just unequivocally better - even my extremely cramped bathrooms stand head and shoulders above the ones I experienced in France.
7:11 This specific faucet is a bit fancy (Honestly, the whole house is a bit fancy. Its a freaking lake house!) , but most kitchen faucets have a sprayer option either in the main faucet itself, or a separate sprayer attachment. Garbage disposal are common, and not ubiquitous, and are not that expensive, maybe about $100. That refrigerator is not common at all. That's like a $4000 appliance.
Re: cars. I usually have 4 vehicles. A “daily driver”, a pickup truck, a “summer” car (or collectable car) and an RV, and sometimes a motorcycle, too! I will usually have a snowmobile and a 4 wheeler as well ! I’m a Canadian who lives in the BC mountains, though. And my wife has her car, too! Peace
@@KS-ip5xn I can think of a lot of reasons for it . Work truck , small business . My dad always had more cars than could be driven because he liked to buy sell trade and fix them too
My family would save their old cars and hand them down to a teen driver. Then, they would go finance a newer car. I mean a car only lasts so long, and if a teen is coming to that age it makes more sense to just hand over the old one instead of buying a used or newer one. I feel like that's a typical American thing that happens with families.
My MIL was British and she lived stateside for several years before returning. She said one of the best things we had were window screens. She hated bugs.
I am 74 and do remember old houses without screens but you could buy telescoping screens called push screens and insert them in the open window and then pull the window down on them to hold them in place. I had to buy some when we rented our first apartment in the upstairs of an old house.
I have my mini van for kids and sports stuff, my husband has his car, then we have one specifically with 4 wheel drive that we got specifically for vacations. The last several years my whole family takes a vacation to 4x4 beach in NC where there are no roads and you have to drive 10 miles down the beach to get to the house. Also useful for harsh winters when we get lots of ice and snow. Then we have a pick up truck for what everyone else uses pick ups for lol. Lumber, bags of soil and gardening stuff, tools, heavy yard equipment, etc. and my 19 year old daughter has her own car. We don’t buy anything new, always used or from auctions. Everything is paid off. And we have 8 TVs 😂🤦🏻♀️ No recliners though.
I reside in Phoenix, AZ, where air conditioning is an absolute necessity. We endure more than 120 scorching days with temperatures exceeding 100°F (37°C), and a staggering 55 days surpassing 110°F (43°C). Suffice it to say, air conditioning is a big deal here. 😄
I'm on septic and well system & we have a garbage disposal. But I'm very careful about what goes in it too. As with the toliets too. I live in an updated 1860's house.
@@ayabokti161 Everything I was always taught was that you really shouldn't. Most of our food, except or meat, of course goes into the garden compost pile, less soil to buy that way
@@currentsitguy My last house had a septic system, so I let as little as possible go down the drain. The chickens got most of it, lol. But we had a garbage disposal that was designed especially for septic systems; it ground food super fine and injected an enzyme into the system with every use.
I have a septic AND a well AND a sink disposal. Been in this house for over 12 years and haven't had any issues BUT I have the septic serviced routinely and am aware of what goes down the disposal daily.
The mail thing, yes normal and people don’t tamper with your mail. The recliner thing is fairly common too. Also, screens are on all our windows, yes. And AC is common as well, even if it’s just a window unit and doesn’t work super well. The rest of the stuff is stuff you see in the homes of people who are better off than I was/am. I have 1 TV, I don’t have a recliner, I don’t have an ice make in my fridge. I do have a garbage disposal in my sink but I didn’t have one growing up. And I have one car and even growing up, my family usually just had one car to share.
While the homeowner has to buy and install the mailbox it is actually Federal Property. Tampering with the mail or mailbox is a federal felony. The postal service actually has its own force of postal inspectors to investigate and arrest people. In my area a neighborhood had about 20 mailboxes vandalized in one evening. One of the guys that did it had a prior criminal record. He got a 18 month prison sentence and a $12,000 fine along with restitution.
@@suran396 So who do you think pays for the construction and upkeep of anything involved with the government? The government doesn't have a penny the taxpayers didn't give them. (outside of all the bribe money...the big guy needs his 10%).
Sorry but I had to laugh at his expression and shock to learn we have screens on all our windows to stop bugs from entering. I can’t imagine living where there is no screens on windows. Someone should start up a small business with screens, they will grow profit extremely fast in other countries. @L3WG Reacts, the screen are a mine mesh wire or plastic form with the tiniest hole spaces covering the entire screen, no bugs of any kind will fit through them. Love opening the windows in Spring to get a nice breeze in the home.
Tea tree oil, apple cider vinegar, and water in a spray bottle and then drench the outside of your window and the surrounding area/plants. It works. Two summers ago I had hundreds of flies in my house because of some bushes immediately in front of my house. I was ready to yank the whole lot out, but didn't want to hurt the feelings of the person who planted them for me for free and lives next door. I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try before getting rid of the bushes. I had maybe 6 flies in my house this past summer and that's pretty normal. You might have to refresh after a rain, but other that that it lasted me the entire summer and fall doesn't show up until October where I live. There are recipes online, but I did maybe 20+ drops of tea tree oil, half cup of ACV, and filled the rest with water in a smaller spray bottle you can find in the beauty section.
@@randalmayeux8880 get some stem fruit fly spray and spray the screen it’s oily so it sticks to surfaces and kills all the tiny fliers instantly. I love the stuff I keep the aerosol and regular spray bottle around as in the summer time we get lake flies it even kills them instantly. Though you might have to clean All the dead knats off your screen 😂
We have a communal mailbox in our subdivision in CA. Where there are little boxes all in one area and we have a key to open it and a slot to put Mail in, what you want the post man to take. I guess similar to an apt complex but it's outside like one for ever block- most homes built late 1980s and later have this, It's just the older homes that have one mailbox per house.
Not having screens on windows is mind boggling.
I agree especially as it’s a relatively inexpensive thing to do!
BRB. Gonna buy and ship a bunch of screens and frames to take to England. Probably make bank doing that.
My brain blue screened when he said they didn't have screens. Like, y'all out here just raw dogging the outside?
@@gothnate😂😂😂
Yep I went to England and the weather was nice so our hotel had the windows open in our room there were flies everywhere.
It is a federal offense to tamper with someone's mail. People will steal packages off your porch but they won't touch what's in your mailbox
Not all places have flags on their mailboxes. In one apt I lived in, outgoing mail would go in the frame around the mailboxes.
I was going to say the same exact thing LO.L
Probably because more often than not the only thing in your mail box are bills, and who wants to steal that? XD
Frausters are brazen now and will alter checks from your mailbox. That's for the old school people who still write checks and buy stamps. Online payments or bill pay from ur bank account is easiest and cheapest way to pay the bills.
Mail tampering does happen occasionally, because people are idiots. But yeah, it's definitely not *worth* it, because you can get in way more trouble than it's worth. If you're going to commit a felony and risk the consequences, there are far more appealing and potentially lucrative ways to do it, than reading your neighbor's mail. Frankly, there are more appealing and lucrative forms of completely legal unskilled labor, like working a cash register.
As an American, I think it's funny you call the recliner a cinema chair. Where I'm from, recliners were standard in homes when I was growing up, and reclining chairs at the movies only became a thing about 10 years ago lol.
you're lucky. in my area, only the super expensive imax theatre has chairs like that. everything else is one step up from stadium seats- annoying fixed plastic chairs with cushions. The better the theatre, the more cushion.
The recliner as a standalone chair has been around since at least the 1970s. Reclining seats in couches are newer. I don't remember seeing them before ~20 years ago.
Well, recliners aren't standard in the way that the house comes with them installed like a kitchen sink. But yeah, it's rather common that people have at least one recliner in the house, or even couches that can recline.
And you can get recliners with massage and heat.
Recliners are a trademark of older Midwest homes. My in-laws each had one and I thought they were the laziest people, especially because they were obese. My mother’s first impression of my mother in law was the woman sitting on the recliner with her fat naked feet up in the air and she didn’t even get up to meet my mom. Ugh!
The laundry room with a washer and dryer! I discovered that when I moved to the States. I designed mine in this house and it is huge so I can have the dog and cat food, cat litter, a sink, an upright freezer, a clothe line for delicates, room to store laundry baskets, brooms, detergents and shelves and more shelves. It is one of the best investment I made. I do like the French windows better because they have shutters that you can actually use. Here, they are only decorations. They are great to for insolation, privacy and protection. I also have fallen in love with recliners. Were I to move back to Europe, I would take them with me. And finally, the size of the houses, and the rooms inside. I love the feeling of openness in large rooms. Same with cars which, to my delight, are fully automatic. This European loves the American life style.
The air conditioning for humidity control doesn’t get the love it deserves. Just getting the moisture out of the already cool air is so nice.
I am a janitor at a school in southern Texas. 104 degrees with heavy humidity. For some reason, the school district decided it would be a great idea to save electricity by turning the AC off in the schools in our town. Because ‘no one will be there anyway during the summers ’. Ummm/ you have a group of employees doing labor intensive work all summer. It gets about 80 degrees in the classrooms WITH added humidity. Makes it reallllyyy hard to be a peppy efficient employee. 🥵
@@CinderellaRaptured333and with modern buildings being sealed so tightly how mold is a major problem when A/C and it's dehumidifying functions are turned off.
@@tsiefhtes Yeah. We have those clocks that have the time/date/temp/humidity information on them.
Our particular school feels very humid when the AC is off. I’m assuming the builders cut corners to save money, bc it’s not insulated well at all! It’s an older school. One day, the air in the classroom went out. The teacher was irritable and complaining that it was SO humid and hot! Upwards of 80 degrees according to the clock. They fixed it for her. I told her, “Yeah- imagine the whole school feeling like this! Because we work in this all summer.” She couldn’t believe it. She was like, there’s no way I could do that! That’s so sad they make yall work without cooler air like that.
@@CinderellaRaptured333They did that in some districts here in North Carolina last year resulting in mold so bad school was delayed by weeks and cost millions in remediation. Administrators are often quite stupid.
@@zuzuspetals9281 Agreed!!!!!
Recliners are absolutely normal. Not everyone has them, but quite common.
Yeah, not everyone has a reclining sofa, but a lot of people at least have a reclining chair. I don't - not enough room for one where I live now - but my dad has a recliner that also lifts up in the back to help him stand up. Full disclosure though, he's over 80 so I doubt he'd be able to get out of a stuffed chair without the help.
I have a reclining sofa and a couple old la-z boys, loooove them
Recliners are a love hate thing in the USA. Men love them. Women hate them because they are ugly.
But I've never seen one in a cinema...the space is way too small to recline or stick your feet up.
@lynnw7155 every movie theater I've been in in the past 5-10 years has had recliners for seats. I used to think the same thing, but they take out entire rows of seats to put them in. It cuts the seating by 50-75%, but it is so much better. No more getting your seat kicked or not being able to see over a tall person.
It blows my mind that after a thousand years people in Europe have not discovered insect screens
Or iced drinks.
We dont need them, most days its too cold to open the windows so on average I get maybe 10 houseflies come in through the window a year. Maybe a wasp or two. Don't really get mosquitos here.
Or air conditioning. LOL
@@SpiklethingGermany disagrees 😂. They apparently open windows all year round to get fresh air, temperature be dammed.
@@Spiklething But how do you keep your cats inside? Or your toddler-age, curious and active children?
Icemaker has different options:
"Crushed Ice"
"Regular size ice"
The last option is "water" only.
cubed or crushed on power freeze setting
My mom got my step dad a machine for making sonic ice
Wow, it just blows my mind that people don't have screens on their windows in Europe here it's standard. No bugs for me😂
No window screens is the craziest thing, so cheap and easy to do.
@@pete56never had to add a screen any house I've seen it's standard. Order new windows and they automatically come with screens. Went to England and there were flies in our hotel room cause they had the windows open.
Not just bugs will get in without a screen but also the occasional bat. And if you have a cat it'll take off. Most cats are kept inside.
Exactly! lol I would NEVER open a window.
@@alisonflaxman1566 My windows have always had screens too, but if they didn't I would put some on.
I love seeing this UK guy reacting so excitedly to things we just take for granted here in the US. He put a smile on my face with his cheerful enthusiasm.
I thought he was a Comedian being silly 😂 Noo screens
Was just about to say the same!
I'm just happy to finally see a video comparing US vs. ??? and not have it bagging on everything US.
Ha yeah right ;)@@zugmeister314
Those rubbish disposal systems are unbelievably polluting! Imagine all the stuff that gets to the waste water treatment plants and has to be filtered out of the water instead of just being put in the compost or the “green bin” which is collected by the municipality and ecologically disposed off!
I worked as a rural postman in one of the poorest and most crime-ridden parts of my state, for a brief time only. One of the things I learned, extremely quickly, is that no one, not even the craziest junky, messes with the mail. For two main reasons: They deliver the checks. And they have the oldest, and most fuck around and find out police force, founded in 1775 by Ben Franklin.
It's also worth realizing that these days, the blue mail drop boxes are becoming a rarity, so your option for mailing letters is either you mailbox or taking it to an actual post office.
Not many people know about the Posral Service private Feds. Perhaps in bad neighborhoods they're more common.....
Postal Inspectors trump the FBI
True story
I find it hilarious
Philly?!😂😂
@@SmallSpoonBrigade Blue mail drop boxes are still relatively common where I live(VT). Usually 2-3 per town.
I have a screened-in porch to enjoy the summer nights without bugs plus you enjoy the feeling that you're outdoors. Watching fireflies (we call it lightnin' bugs in the South) glow in the dark is like you're in space with the stars.
I’m from upstate NY and we always called them Lightning Bugs too.
I spent a summer in Nashville and couldn't believe the clouds of fireflies. I asked a girlfriend if she knew why there were so many there, and I wondered what they eat. She replied, "What do farflies eat? I dunno...their innards are so tiny..." I loved that chick for saying that!
No...the mailman does not have a key. It's unlocked, but considering that messing with someones mail within their mailbox is a federal crime, it's not a big risk, at least where I live.
Another deterrent being 90% of anything recieved in the mail being taxes.
yea you don't wanna commit a mail crime, the Post Office has Federal Agents who are armed, and I mean ARMED BOI.
OMG, every house I have been in in the last 50 years has a recliner chair, and for the last 20 years they have all been electric
It depends on your neighborhood. In newer developments you’ll often see a set of mailboxes on a big post that also contains two or three package boxes and an outgoing mail slot. You have as assigned box and use a key to,open it. Of course the mail carrier has the master key to open the entire box. We have that kind of set up in our development, there’s a mail box on every block, mounted on the sidewalk at the edge of the curb so the mail carrier can fill the boxes and collect outgoing mail without leaving their vehicle, unless the package you’re receiving is too large for one if the package boxes and then they leave it on your front porch.
Mine actually does have a lock. There's a slot for the mail to be put in once the door is opened. You need the key to open it to get the mail out. Anything too big to fit through the slot, is brought to the house.
Window screens are a very fine mesh. They used to be made of thin wire, but modern ones are made of plastic fibers. They are absolutely essential to keep out flying insects.
They missed, probably one of the bigger conveniences of America versus Europe, is the laundry room. Typically in Europe, the washer dryer combo machine is either in the bathroom or the kitchen. There are a lot of dedicated laundry rooms in bigger homes in the US. Or just a dedicated laundry closet in the hallways.
Yes. Some homes also have the laundry setup in the basement.
My wish is to design a large, multi-functional laundry room with large storage closets for Christmas decor, extra China sets and glassware, gift wrapping table, folding area. I do not understand why builders put the laundry 🧺 in the scary basement, (think of the scene with Kevin McAllister in Home Alone) or near the kitchen. I don’t keep my clothes in the kitchen. A laundry should be near the bedrooms. Hats off to all those poor women who had to schlepp heavy laundry down and then back up two flights of stairs. Whether here in the U.S., or in Europe, we have to begin to think more creatively and practically about homes and design. And bathrooms should not be near dining areas. Just sayin’.
And Americans have dryers not dehumidifiers for drying the laundry. You can have a load of towels and jeans dry in 20 minutes!
@@user-es9mb8wi3m We are a retired couple and when we downsized, there was no laundry at all. So we took the second bedroom and made it a laundry room/walk-in closet.
@@TallulahB58 Good move, Tallulah. The importance of the laundry in the function of a home is grossly underestimated. It seems always to be an afterthought, the smallest, often windowless room in most cases. Often just a closet. Space is needed for moving around, folding, hanging clothing, and storage. It should be a pretty, pleasant room in which to work because we spend quite a bit of time in there. Enjoy your lovely laundry room.
this lady is honestly living in her own world, she’s quite clearly from a middle class or upper class family. In the town i live in there’s a population of about 3,000 and it’s not “normal” to have a lake house, or central air, to have a garbage disposal and most people where i live don’t even have one car per person.
I live in a city. There is no central air, garbage disposals are rare, we don't have 1 car per person, and most of us don't have ice makers or sink sprayers. We DO have window screens, so theres that.
That is the truth. There needs to be a disclaimer that while a lot of homes have the amenities & upgrades she enumerates, it is by no means every home.
Yeah a lake home is not something we all have, I would consider that more upper class. I live in a suburb of Houston and we have the central air/heat, garbage disposal and a pool. However we only have one car each. I'm not sure who would have more than one unless they were a car collector?!
I've never had a garbage disposal, but we have three cars for three people and we do have air conditioning. Not upper middle class, more on the lower end of middle. You can't walk anywhere here in winter so need everyone to have a car.
No kidding! I consider our family of four to be firmly middle class in a large Midwestern town. We just became a two car family. We don't have an ice maker. We have one TV. Our windows don't stay open without being propped. We only run the AC from May-Sept, heat from Nov-Feb, and I don't allow the AC to be more than 10 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Yesterday it was 98, so our house was 88. As far as I'm concerned, we've got it made
Rich people never seem to know that they're rich. Haha
She lives in a more upper middle class area. That is not how a lot of Americans live. Lake front properties are rare and very expensive. Owning 6 TVs is a lot, 3 is more like it. The two vehicles in the driveway are usually a sedan and a truck, and if you have a third vehicle, mostly due to having young drivers in the family over the age of 16. Her parents live in a very large house, and most Americans live in smaller square foot homes.The recliners are very common for living rooms.
I think they are squarely in "upper class" territory here.
She is definitely upper class. I'm middle class. 3 bedroom home, 1 car, 1 tv, minimal debt, but no savings. Living paycheck to paycheck.
@@Phoenix_DarkMoon It depends, midwesterners used to buy or build these lakefront properties as vacation homes that would be shared and funded by extended family. I'm middleclass in michigan and my extended family does this still with a lakefront home that was built by my great grandfather in the 1950's or 60's...
Multiple cars is definitely not the norm... Her parents are probably upper middle class. My parents have an extra vehicle. It's a truck for hauling things.
Thank you. I came here to say this is not the typical home here. Also, the size of the yard. Most houses would be lucky to have half that size depending on the age. The newer houses might be lucky to have 1/8 an acre.
A lot of people don't realize this, but we used to have a serious malaria problem in the US. Window screens were a counter to this and they've stayed around ever since.
The thing about multiple cars per person is a bit overblown in this video. Most American homes have at most one car per person over 16. The only people I know who have more than one car per person are those who have a business, so they'll have a car for regular use, and a van or pick-up for their business.
I didn't know that!
This is basically it. A nuclear family will typically have two cars if they can afford it, one for the husband to get to work, and one for the mother with kids to run errands, get groceries, etc. If there are more cars, it is because there is a 16+ who needs to get to school or work. Cars are expensive!
Yes, because as someone else noted about AC, the U.S. is so much further south than the UK. That warm damp air = malaria AND great AC!
Car people often have more cars than drivers. It has nothing to do with having a business. For example, we have 5 vehicles. One is a motorcycle that only I ride, a truck that we only use when we need to do truck stuff, and a Jeep that I am slowly restoring after an engine fire. My wife and I both have small 4 door cars we daily drive for work etc. We are not in anywhere near the financial position it appears this family in the video is in, 3 of our vehicles were very nearly "free". My daily was an inheritance, the bike was $300, and the Jeep was free.
WHOLE REASON CDC invented and placed in ATLANTA was mainly Malaria. People also forget that is why the South had a lot of naturally immune African slaves as time went on and less Irish, the susceptible indentured servants. Malaria killed the whites so the ones with money, sent their kids away from South during the summers. Plantations developed this way due to insects and climate people were used to too. It wasn't just racism, it was measurable levels of immunity and people always forget this because most don't study entomology, virology and epigenetics. I used to work at the CDC so I appreciate the facts that built it and how things like DDT, even though had lots of bad to it, changed the landscape and potential of the South, especially GA, SC and Florida.
Everyone’s talking about the screens on the windows. I’M still trying to wrap my head round HIM trying to wrap his head round the fact that you can send letters or small packages from your mailbox! 🤣
Lolol
@@fex144
Well, by your logic the UK doesn’t have internet or phones either, since they still have post boxes! 🤣
In the US, most people don't have more than one car for a person unless they have specific needs for it, for example work trucks, farmer's tractors and crop harvesters, or full size vans for large families. The primary exception to this are people who repair and resell cars for a hobby or as part of their job. I know a mechanic who works for the state who also owns 11 cars, and fixes them up on the side.
Also, you always want to run the water while running the garbage disposal because it helps pulverize the food waste.
Middle class here, and we've got 3 daily drivers (1 is for friends and family if visiting) and 3 project cars .. but no kids so we can afford them.
Your expression when she reclined the couch 😂😂
And when she started moving around the kitchen faucet 😂😂
My coworker took a vacation to Florida and had never seen the screened enclosures surrounding swimming pools in people's backyards. She told me, "there's a whole room of screened walls and ceiling connected to the houses". Having lived in Florida for 30 years, I know why they are built. As soon as the summer sun dips in the sky, around 4pm, the mosquitoes come out. You would never use your pool after 4pm unless you want to get eaten alive. The screened enclosure also protects kids from the neighborhood coming in to swim in your pool. If the kid drowns, it's the homeowner's fault even if the kid was trespassing. The enclosure also keeps debris from trees falling into your pool and making it dirty. And lastly, it helps to keep alligators and other wildlife from using your pool as a lake. The one thing I didn't like about the enclosure is that the pool water temp is colder with the screens vs without. However on hot, humid, summer days the cold water feels nice!
Enclosed pools like that also keep out the alligators!
I lived in Florida for a year and I've never seen a screen completely surrounding a pool. My apartment did have a screened patio though. That was really nice.
Florida has their pools enclosed bc venomous snakes, gators, etc
Your "lastly" part should have been your "firstly" (and only needed) part.
Yes, us Floridians love our lanais. GREAT invention. I think originated in Hawaii?
Something I miss with new houses in America.... porches and patios. Now some houses will have one or the other or they will have a wooden deck. My grandmother's old house had both a porch out front with rocking chairs and out back was a large patio with a fire pit. During the day (mostly on Sundays) we'd sit out front drinking ice tea and marvel at her flower garden. At night we'd move to the back patio and tell stories around the fire pit. I loved the patio, it looked out over a grassy field with a few apple trees and her huge vegetable garden. Although when it's harvest season the size of that vegetable garden was painful. The grandkids would spend the day picking vegetables while the mothers were cleaning and prepping them, and grandma was manning the stove canning all the vegetables. I know, tell me you're Gen X without saying you're Gen X. lol
GenX _or prior._ We weren't the only generation to see this en masse - just the last to see it that way.
It depends on the builder, my development was built seventeen years ago and when you picked out your floor plan, you also had a choice of three different variations of the exterior but they all included covered porches. Also a large patio was included in the back of your house.
I still see porches and patios but it's like the front and back yards, it's getting smaller. But you're right, you can see it slowly being less common than it once was.
My last house only had a front stoop and a concrete patio out back. When we got our new home a couple of years ago...I finally got my front and back porches. Love them!
In my part of the country, if you step foot outside in the summer, you'll get attacked by gnats, flies, mosquitoes, chiggers.
Her mother is upper class daughter living abroad in a house on a lake (she said mid-west where you can get bigger houses then on the east or west coast specially cities)
This lady from an upper middle class family. A lot of Americans don’t have power recliners, 4 tvs, a lake view, or 2 cars per person. But most homes do have an ice maker, screened windows, a/c and probably a garbage disposal.
You saved me a rant 😅 i was like shit i barely have the one car
This...except the garbage disposal...i can only think of a few houses iv been in that had one, so for that i feel like its not as common as she's making it sound
I bought power recliners 4y ago took a puppy and a toddler to destroy them and me regret spending 5k on them .will go cheaper next time as for fancing as european living in US ...love my privacy would love to have less front yard and more backyard ...got a pool i'm also lots in gardening so yeah would if possible extend my backyard
@@Wheelz_TVwait what? I never been to a house or an apartment without garbage disposal? Even cheap apartment has one
@@inna1633 obviously it wasn’t good for you, but millions enjoy them…
As others have noted, it's worth noting that this appears to be a wealthy family. Some families do have several cars to a family, but usually only very wealthy people have more than one car per person. That kitchen is also quite large, although it is relatively common in newer homes to have that detachable faucet and a garbage disposal. In American apartments built before those things were common, it's not unusual to have neither of those things. That view is also a wealthy people view.
What's funny is that recliners have been somewhat common in America for a while, so when cinemas started to have them my thought was "wow this is a recliner just like my grandma's," not "my grandma's house is just like a cinema chair."
I was thinking that too about the recliners. It’s only been in the last decade that we have gotten those kinds of cinema chairs and they are only in one of the rooms at the movies while the other 14 or so have the old straight back ones. We have had recliners in homes since I was a little kid (and before.) It’s funny how that’s backwards.
Yes, that is a high end home. Those refrigerator are very expensive. I certainly don't have one.
i would mostly agree, but it feels like buying broken down "project" cars and fixing them up is becoming more common these days with how messed up car prices have become.
I used to live in a one vehicle per occupant home, but then one of the occupants was no more. One vehicle is used for transporting big things, but isn't very fuel efficient. The other is fuel efficient with 60 miles of electric range. The electric range is enough for 95% of my driving. Round trips to the airport are outside the range, but not that frequent.
I have never been to a theater with a full reclining seat. Even the newly built on just has seats that tilt back a little. I live in Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.
Not only do screens let in air but also the sounds of nature. Air conditioning is not just for cooling but removing humidity which helps with the feeling of comfort.
That depends on the region. Where I live, the HVAC system has a humidifier that adds moisture to the air. Other places have de-humidifiers, and some places have both.
and if you have allergies the air conditioning helps a lot
I live somewhere very dry, so swamp coolers reign supreme. I actually struggle with a dry cough sometimes because of systems that remove humidity when it's already kind of dry after growing up with the swamp cooler...
Edit: I COULD'VE SWORN I MADE SURE IT SAID LIVE, NOT LOVE, BUT!
@@JanMaynz the one thing I don't like very much about swamp coolers is the smell, and it wasn't just one particular home, it was a common thing to smell that 'swamp cooler' smell everywhere that used them. That being said, I'd happily deal with the stink of swamp coolers if the only alternative was living without screens on my windows.... I can't cope with having mosquitoes, june bugs, and other unsavory critters getting into my home
Where I live in the UK average maximum temperature is 64F, definately dont need AC.
We have those large mailboxes on the streets too, usually in busy areas. The pickup hours are posted there, too.
Different vehicles have different uses too. I have a little car for most of my commuting, but I also inherited a pickup which is useful for moving things around. I use it more than I'd ever think.
US mail carrier here.. We do collect outgoing mail from mailboxes and offer "package pickup". Items too large for the mailbox can be scheduled for pick up at any location at their address, ie front porch, garage, inside (no, we don't go into their house.. we knock and they bring it out!! Lol). Customers go online to set up a pick up, then the carriers get print outs in the morning telling us which address, # of outgoing parcel(s) & where we can find them on site.
Also, mail theft is a BIG no-no in the US and, as stated by others, is a federal offense, with up to 5 years in FEDERAL prison and $5,000 fine, for each offense. They don't take it lightly either, having federal postal inspectors, which have higher authority than local or state police agencies (and yes, they do carry firearms). It's kinda scary when they come to your office because you know it's probably theft, drugs or weapons that brought them there.
Don't know if you get this much, but thank you for what you do.
Thank you!! 😊
I found it so satisfying to learn the Postal Inspectors trump the FBI!
I wish the druggies and criminals in my area would respect the mail laws. It's so bad that the blue mailboxes are gone now, except in front of post offices, but they get broken into, also. You have to actually give your outgoing mail to an employee in the post office now. Ugh
9:34 - Reclining sofas/couches are quite common in the US. However, a lot of them use a manual lever, rather than an electric motor. Then your legs push it down when you get up. She said "when I was a kid", but they still sell non-electric ones, because they're a LOT cheaper, and also a lot lighter to move around than the electric ones.
Exactly! I bought a new reclining love seat last year and bought a manual one… because of all the things you said, but also I don’t want a higher draw on my electricity.
A sofa with motorized recliners on either end can easily go $2400 USD and up (depending on additional frills). Add in real leather and you're looking at around $5000. :D
That’s the kind I have
and in an older house, the wall outlets are too precious to be used for a chair.
True to an extent, although it's not difficult to add a splitter or power strip. An electrician can also add more plugs in the wall.
Whoever owns this house has MONEY! They have the newest and nicest amenities. This is the typical home for someone in upper middle class or wealthy. Living on a lake with that view is costly! But, yes most homes have yards typically decent in size, screened windows, garbage disposals, ice makers, and at least a car per person or at least one for mom and one for dad.
That house is HUGE! And, yeah, I noticed that massive back yard right on the lake! Yeah, as I mentioned in a previous comment, this girl doesn't realize how privileged she is... talking like practically everyone has it that good... Absolutely clueless.
But they are not rich rich. Just comfortable.
Those things don’t make them wealthy. Comfortable, yes. But not wealthy. Working hard for the things you have doesn’t make you privileged or clueless. Get a grip.
Idk, I feel like msot do the things she used in the kitchen, (fridge and sink) just LOOK nice, they are like every other sink and fridge just a little more fancy.
Like I have a fridge that has a smaller space for a taller drawer and a deeper freezer. That’s basically the only difference. I think you’re just looking for reasons atp.
@@aleatharhea I dunno. We have a 2500 sq.ft. four bedroom home, with a nice open kitchen and most everything she showed (save for only two cars and two old TVs), and it cost less than 240k. Of course, we're out in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, but it suits us. Mostly it all depends on where one lives, and what sacrifices one is willing to make (such as moving out to the middle of nowhere). Our income is pretty minimal, too - we paid for the house by selling off the old one, and out here tax is very low and bills are likewise low. It's all about location and how you want to live.
Aside from the typical bells and whistles for most U.S. houses, construction means and methods differ across the U.S. due to the environment. Just hear in Texas, you have the Chihuahuan desert of El Paso in the west and the costal “swamp” of Houston in the east. Hence, building is different. Not to mention - equidistant north from El Paso - you have alpine environs of Colorado.
As a former postal worker. In class they told us the Office of the Postmaster General Inspector is the 2nd highest police force in the country. The only people that outrank them in civilian service is the secret service. Stealing/putting anything in a mailbox that is not your is a felony. They will find you if they want to. The mailbox on each property is TECHNICALLY the federal government's property. You are technically only allowed to replace it with certain boxes but the mailman usually lets it slide if they like you.
IIRC, that's mostly because mail that's going from one side of the country to the other via truck passes through hundreds of jursidictions. The result is that in order to figure out where it was stolen, the Postmaster Inspector General has to have that level of authority.
Then why is our mail getting stolen daily left and right in some big cities in the US?
@@tonette11000 murder is illegal and people still kill lol if you want you can file a report on continued theft and they will eventually get around to you. I wasn't in the dept but it is all true. I'm with UPS now and have done Amazon both stressed DAILY DO NOT PUT IT IN THE MAILBOX. mailmen that care will take the packages back to the post office and the UPS driver will get them next time he goes to drop off a bulk of packages along with a report on where and a warning of a fine/escalation if it keeps happening.
Not all houses have such great views. Some are close together and you have fenced yards for dogs and safety if there is a pool back there.
I am from Florida and could not imagine a life without AC or window screens. The heat, humidity, and insane number of bugs here, will literally kill you. Growing up we always had at least three vehicles. Dad wanted a spare in case one was broken, so he was never late to work, & we couldn't get to school. I have continued that thought process into my life with children. Public transportation is not readily available in the country or rural areas. Most US houses at least have a tv in the main living room and bedrooms, but it is not uncommon to have them in a workout room, kitchen, or back porch for parties. We are not rich, nor do we have the massive house or amazing view as this poster, but we have all the items listed.
Can't forget the garage.
Also helps keep snakes out, those window screens.
I could’ve imagine it either !
In my neighborhood in the US the mailboxes are a bank of lock boxes. Each house gets assigned a number and given a key to their box. If there's a package there are package bins where they will secure the package and deposit the key in your mailbox. To send letters, there is a specific slot that is communal that people can put their letters in, but no one besides the post office has the key to open that.
Your reactions crack me up! 69 year old American here. I lived in Brazil for 4 years where there were no screens. But where we lived, there weren't a lot of bugs either. We closed all the windows at 5 PM before the mosquitoes were out. But in the U.S., even when I was a child and we were poor, there were always screens. We lived in a place that was too cold for bugs and still had screens! :) But I agree with one of the comments, the house in the video belongs to someone relatively wealthy. Double ice makers, 6 TV's, more than one car per person and that beautiful view are not the usual in the U.S.
It's actually pretty common in rural areas.
No, they're not poor, but could be anywhere from mid-to-upper middle class.
@@alanlight7740if you haven’t noticed the middle class is shrinking rapidly in America. So even if they are Upper middle class that’s makes them very well of in todays economy compared to the AVERAGE American.
The building code in the US requires screens in certain rooms. That doesn't mean they won't get damaged over time. I remember kitchens being one required room to keep flies away from food preparation areas.
That house is definitely upper middle class, tho from the size of their driveway it could be in a rural area. Having a gorgeous view like that is not the norm in the US, however, even in rural areas.
@@alanlight7740Agreed. You don't necessarily have to be rich to have all these things but as far as the beautiful view goes, you may not be wealthy but you will probably be spending the bulk of your savings on it lol.
Yes, most of these things are standard in American homes: window screens, ice makers, garbage disposals. We don’t have a recliner, but my parents have had recliners as long as I can remember. They’re so comfortable, you can literally sleep in them.
I literally stayed in a recliner at my parents house for a week after I'd had abdominal surgery, and wasn't supposed to sleep completely laying down, or on my side like I usually do. They are definitely comfortable enough for sleeping, (pretty much only left it for the bathroom for about 4 days, until I was ready to start moving around)
I'm literally here to say I'm staying up too late watching this video... While laying in a power recliner while recovering from abdominal surgery!
@@ringringbananarchy Tbh I sleep in recliner pretty much every single night for the last year… I tend to get pretty bad migraines if I lay down flat or rather if I have migraine (which I get pretty often) they get much worse if I lay down completely flat. So I started sleeping in my recliner whenever I had a migraine, which progressed into me just sleeping in the recliner every night now. Lol
I’ve literally slept in recliners also. No one messes with anyone else’s mail.
@@spinthepickle1244Hope you feel better.
The window screen is a metal or plastic mesh (with tiny tiny holes) that lets air through but not bugs. The mesh is mounted on a rail that is affixed just behind the actual window on the bottom in it's own track. It can be pulled out for repairs or to clean the windows. LOVE SCREENS. Also, we have SCREEN DOORS that have mesh instead of glass that are mounted in the door jam about 3 inches in front of the outside door so you can open the door and bugs not come in. The handle can also be locked to help prevent instrusion.
FYI: Window screens are typically mounted in frames that can be slid up and down or removed altogether, so people can escape out the window in the event of a house fire.
You can also get pet screen, which is a thicker black plastic, but you can still see through it very well, and it keeps cats from ripping the screens to shreds, which any cat will do if you let them get a chance at a regular screen window. We had it on our porch outside in Virginia. Costs more but absolutely worth it.
6:42 The garbage/trash disposal in the kitchen sink is NOT for ALL of the trash. It's for the crumbs and small pieces of food that are left in the sink after hand-washing the dishes, but not for bones or large chunks of food; if the piece of food world take up most of the area in the bowl of a spoon, it goes into the trash can. If you don't run the disposal every day, do run it at least once per week, and ALWAYS run the disposal with the hot water running in the sink. These tips were told to me by the garbage disposal installer.
Some people have a second fridge or freezer in their garage for extra food storage. We also have laundry rooms with washers, dryers, ( Humid areas takes forever to dry fabric and towels) and small sinks to hand wash items. Most of us with a garage have remote controlled openers, so we drive up, push the button, after the door rolls up, we drive in and close the door. The new energy saving in houses it to have cooling and heating "zones", so you only warm or cool the part of the house you're using; at night only the bedroom zones stay on. In the rest of the house, it's off. Dry desert areas have water systems for the yard/ garden that adjust the amount of water, depending on the weather. On rainy days it turns off.
Ah, my neighborhood doesn’t have such wonderful garages. They’re small, unattached, single car with old doors, lucky if they open at all. Side door access, they’re usually storage/wood shop/fix-it spaces. Everyone parks in the driveway, sucks in the winter and the summer. Considering brick homes hold heat and those with them particularly hate 100°+ summers, swamp coolers are barely better than a box fan, and A/C can be a life or death decision to have. Sprinkler systems take maintenance over the years, but lawns can do surprisingly well if you don’t water them. Grass is actually hard to kill, can water once a month even in the heat if there’s a drought (or if they’re diverting water to waste in the desert to play climate games, as they are in our city).
Rocksliding one’s yard (killing every living thing and dumping fkng rocks in one’s yard is a HIDEOUS trend apparently promoted by the morons at HGTV programming, programming, programming…as is mulch-dumping one’s yard. It does NOTHING for the environment, gives NO refuge or habitat of any kind to birds, bees and butterflies, but even a crappy half-dead lawn DOES. It will revive in the spring on its own, and in autumn, even if it suffers in the extreme heat. Our ecosystem will thank people for just leaving their lawns with grass alone.
And for those who do rockslide or mulch their yards and think they’re helping with adding a few plants, well, better than only rocks &/or mulch, but it is still ugly. And it doesn’t provide nearly the habitat for birds, bees and butterflies. Ffs, ground cover that takes over is even better, or bulbs that spread over time. Squirrels come to eat a few, and it impacts nothing. Looks the same, makes them happy, exposes worms for the birds, butterflies and bees come visit (they never bother me, they only react when they are attacked by a screaming giant waving his or her hands, who in their view is trying to kill them for merely going to work for the day, keeping our food system pollinated. I talk to them and they indeed seem to very much know who acknowledges and appreciates them. I’ll sit with them and they’ll even hover right in from of me, a foot anyway, and turn to me for long enough to say hi, then turn to fly away. Anyway, they’re needed, and younger generations are indoors anyway. Might as well help the critters by not being so stupid.
But I digress. That’s one think Brits are known for, their lovely, lovely gardens. We admire them for that. 💕🇬🇧
A lot of homes in the US are starting to build small kitchens in their garages too. Things more common with immigrant families who cook food with stronger smells so that their clothes don’t smell. I’m Caribbean and I’m tempted to do the same to avoid smelling like fried seafood and curry every day. We already have an extra fridge and freezer in there so why not add some cupboards and a small electric stove.
That home is beautiful but definitely expensive. Her parents have money, that's for sure.
I was thinking the same thing. I'm an American in the mid-west. I do not own a TV anymore but growing up we had two, one was small black and white and the other color, then we migrated to two color. Only have one car per person. Now scenic view out the windows, just neighbor's' homes. That type of sink faucet is about $100 or more, and I've never seen a sink that large in anyone's home in my life! Also, I've never lived in a home with that much space. Definitely not a typical American home unless you are the upper middle class.
The backyard lake view is a giveaway. That's an expensive home.
@@matthewcollins4157 You need to get out more. You are in the minority.
probably purchased when it was only like 150k. lol but if they're in the midwest the price may still be "somewhat" low compared to other states.
@@Shirayuuki1 My 3/2 2000 square ft house on a just under 1 acre lake lot in rural MN costs half what I paid for my winter home in S Florida that has a teeny lot and is 1500 sq ft 3/2 on a drainage pond they call a lake. My MN house is on a 1000 acre lake. But in FL the gators are free ha ha ha.
How cute his reactions are! I’m 62, I redid my kitchen. I have the garbage disposal, a very large and deep hand hammered copper sink, a full size refrigerator with a big ice maker, and I have a 24” beverage refrigerator too. I live alone, and have two cars. I have whole house air conditioning, a whole house automatic generator, and a 2200 square foot house, with two recliners in my living room. I worked my ass off for all of it, and I’m happy and grateful for what I have. I wish every good person had the same too.
While many homes do have garbage disposals, if they are older homes (and many homes are in my area) they often do NOT have garbage disposals. Personally, I think they are not ideal. We should be composting our food waste, and not just throw it down the drain. A head of lettuce in a landfill takes 50 years to degrade. In a compost pile it takes about two weeks.
Congrats. You sir are living the American dream
@@Kammy44 it’s minimal what goes down my disposal. I live on 9 acres. I throw everything out for the animals. It’s just scrapings from plates mostly. I feed the woodland creatures.
Gotta love a nice hand hammered copper sink 👌
I live in Arizona, as we have mild winter here, and we love our swimming pools during the summertime, we also have TV in our patio/outdoor living room.
The one big thing she left out is the laundry room. We have an entire room for the washer and dryer, which are 2 separate units. In the UK, I believe there's usually a washer/dryer in the actual kitchen, and it's only one unit.
Not all homes in America either. Where I live its more common to have your washer/dryer in the basement or bathroom if you haver enough rom. Also there is a 50/50 split between the separate and 1 unit washer/dryer.
@@keegansmetanko3755 Certainly. I've seen those all as well. Those are also things you don't often see in the UK. Looking at the house in this video, I would shocked if it didn't have a laundry room, but I digress. I'm more specifically saying that in the US, you don't see washer/dryer units under the kitchen counter in the same location you'd find a dishwasher.
I noticed that as well. I would definitely need a dryer for clothes. I don’t think that’s real common in the UK. Comment please of it is common to have a dryer in the house.
@@keegansmetanko3755 - a one unit piece of stacking washer dryer - or a one unit piece that you put clothes into once and it washes and dries? . . . . No moving clothes into a dryer (whether stand alone or a stacking unit)
Spent a couple months in Europe last year and always felt weird bringing my dirty laundry into the kitchen 😮
I think a key to U.S. consumerism is that we spend a lot of time and income on 'removing' daily annoyances so that we can be more productive as people. Many of these same conveniences one can also find in our work places. When it comes to multiple vehicles, it largely depends on the part of the country one resides. In Northern winters it's safer to drive an SUV or truck (snow, ice.) When the 90F summers arrive it's less costly to drive a sedan or commuter (fuel.) Many in the UK and Europe don't realize how drastic our weather changes through the seasons here. Especially in the North.
Just admit it..US consumers are very spoiled and could get by with a lot less.
It is NOT safer to drive a truck in snow or ice unless it's 4wd.
@@therealimnotjiminyIf you are in snow country you have 4x4. 2wd is about non-existent in the north.
@@jeffmockus5400I live in Minnesota. I have never had 4wheel drive, but rather front wheel drive. I have driven through snow storms safely and watched the idiots with 4wheel drive blast past me and then see them in the ditch. As far as I am concerned, 4wheel drive just gets you in the ditch that much faster and more efficiently! (Also, I know when it is better to just stay home and wait for the plows to come through.)
@@nancykaminski8600 Correct. 4wd is definitely better than a 2wd pickup, which is useless in snow because there's no weight over the rear wheels, and a rwd car is better than a rwd/2wd pickup. Front wheel drive is the best in snow.
Example: BIG, N50/15 rear tires, a posi rear and a couple hundred pounds of weight in the trunk of a '69 Dodge Coronet will out drive any 2wd pickup in snow. This I know for sure. I learned this in the Poconos (East Stroudsburg), as I drove past my friend in his Dodge pickup, which was - really - in a ditch. (He did it twice that year.) Don't even get me started on going up snowy hills.
I just recalled, many years ago my family had a relative visit from the U.K. She was amazed how big everything was, especially the cars. The first time she stopped by to visit my parents and me, my mother ushered her to our back yard. She looked astonished and asked if the entire back yard belonged to us. My parents yard wasn’t an especially large yard, but my mother worked hard every spring planting flowers and making everything beautiful. The thing that shocked my dads cousin the most was a few minutes into her visit while she was sitting enjoying the garden, was a squirrel who ran and hopped off a tree, standing on the grass looking at her. She jumped up, screamed a little, and ran back in the house. My mother and I had to work hard to get her into the yard again. She wanted to know what the wild animal was.
😂
I don't know why she would be scared of a squirrel, have you ever seen the size of the rabbits in the UK??? They are the size of dogs! And I don't mean a Chihuahua.
@@Kammy44 She might not have recognized it because of the coloring. UK squirrels are generally red, while most American squirrels tend to be grey.
@@SubeTheWenchyes I thought that was strange. There are plenty of squirrels in the UK They just look a little different from American squirrels but you can still clearly tell they are squirrels
Depends on where you are in the US for some of these things. Like, we don't have an ice maker in our fridge/freezer combo because our fridge isn't connected to the water supply. For the same reason we don't have a garbage disposal - we're on well water and septic (not town water or sewer). So our "grey water" needs to be water - not food scraps. We have only two TVs (that work - there is a third, but it is in the garage and needs fixing). We do have air conditioning and reclining loveseats. And screens for the windows to keep the bugs out when it is nice enough to open the windows.
Summertime here in North Carolina 31-34 Celsius is an average day. With 85% + humidity. Air conditioning is a must.
If you go due west from London you will find yourself in Hudson Bay. That fact explains a lot about who has air conditioning and who doesn't.
Funniest mailbox quote I just came up with:
"The key to my mailbox is a federal appointment. You're either appointed as the mailman, or appointed a jail sentence."
Too bad it isn’t a law upheld. I’ve had mail and packages stolen and post office and police don’t care 😂
@@SmokinSeshnot the [local] police, the [federal] postal inspector!
@@stephaniefoster1964 nobody did anything. Lol. This was few yrs ago
One thing about air conditioning is that the entire contiguous part of the USA is more southerly than London. Things get pretty warm in the summer, even in the northernmost, snowiest, cities.
Exactly. Here in Minnesota it’s absolutely freezing in winter and boiling hot in the summer with temps sometimes over 100° Fahrenheit
Yeah, I am from Pennsylvania at the northernmost part, and the one year we hit a US record for cold temperature, but during the summer it was one of our hottest summers too like 98 f
This is too entertaining! Yes, almost everyone has recliners, screens on the windows, 3 to 5 tv's. Funny to think how different we all are.
I love watching videos like this because it helps me stay humble and appreciate America. I'm in Florida. Everyday is beautiful and life is very good. I love seeing people's faces when they see things we take for granted over here. It reminds me NOT to take things for granted. I hope you're able to visit us one day!
I'm in Orlando!!
Window screens are a fine wire mesh, about 1 or 2 mm spacing, or a plastic facsimile.
Screens on windows are GREAT!!! They keep out flies, mosquitos, & all kinds of flying or crawling critters!
Used to be made of fine steel wire. I remember seeing rusty screens as a kid in older houses. Modern screens are generally a fiberglass mesh, but aluminum mesh can be found as well.
I'm amazed you haven't heard of window screens. It's my understanding that most homes have them in the USA. In the spring and fall, I LOVE to sleep with the windows open (with just the window screens) and listen to the relaxing sounds of the night. The best sleep ever. 🙌
I love that now. But, when I was a kid, my grandma lived in a rural area. So, there was almost no light outside at night. And she didn’t have air conditioning. So, in the summer she had the windows open with the screen down and you couldn’t see anything outside. But, you could hear all the crickets and other critters, and it would remind me of Friday the 13th and scare the shit out of me. She had the back of the sofa against the window, which made it 1000 times worse.
To be honest, as much fun it is watching him when he sees something he never saw before, it is just as much fun reading comments from people who think all other countries have what we do. The US is a very spoiled country. I think we all don't appreciate it because we are used to it.
@@kristophergoordman7225 Lol sorry you were traumatized 😂😂
Thank you. Somehow I got over it!
@@cajbaf You're right. There are many things we have in the US that are advanced and we're spoiled. I guess it's surprising since I think we've had screens in our homes for as long as I've been alive. I'm 50 years old. So I thought screens were an old and simple invention. England has money. Why haven't they started selling screens (or AC) in their society? It's not like they don't have the means to. These inventions have been around for a long time. I feel bad that they are so hot bc they don't have AC. But then, they can't even open their windows to get air bc bugs come in. Their society has the means to bring these things over there. I'm curious why they haven't, after all this time? England is not an under-developed country.
You can install a fence around your yard if you wish. There are many types available. Some you can see through, and some you cannot. Those are known as a privacy fence. You can have them installed or have them delivered or go to stores like Home Depot, or Lowes and pick it up if you own a pickup truck and install it yourself.
Stuff like screened windows is standard, but keep in mind with things like the fridge this family is upper middle class. This is not an average home.
I dont think the video fridge was so upper midd.e class. This is a pretty common fridge. More and more the freezers are on the bottom.
@@angiemeloy2142 That's still an expensive fridge. Did you not see the rest of their house?
, I grew up in a solidly middle class, single mom home, even in the 70s we had an ice maker.
That was one nice ass fawkin fridge! LOL, we have a pretty decent Samsung fridge, side-by-side fridge doors up top, freezer on bottom that's split into 2 separate freezers with 2 doors, so that general style of fridge is pretty common and accessible these days. But that one in the video specifically is a damn rocket ship😂
@@sandracox4341 no one's talking bout the ice maker.
The recliner is a standard in most American homes. It's typically associated with dad coming home, grabbing a beer, and lounging in his easy chair after a hard day's work.
YES! Iconic American activity for the species of "homess Dadiosus", beer can attached!
“Standard”?? Maybe not. But certainly not uncommon.
@@ednarose86 And Dad has a strong grip on the remote, with the other hand! 😂🤣♥️
I have a recliner that I sleep in because if I sleep in a bed, my back hurts... but my mom has a bed that lifts head and feet. I can't remember what it's called, but it's similar to a hospital bed.... though last time my nephew visited Mom, she gave him her room, so she slept in the den that has two hand lever recliners, and she said it was the best sleep in her life. The den also has a pull out bed in the couch..... which she felt was to time consuming to open and close every night...
We have post office drop boxes, but if you have an individual mail box, the mailman will pick up the letters you want to send. You see this arrangement in less densely populated areas like the suburbs or the rural areas. Yes, someone can steal your mail, but getting into someone else's mail or mailbox is a federal offense.
We put the flag up every day on our mailbox by the road. We leave a nice cold bottle of water for our letter carriers. They love it and every now and then they thank us for thinking of them, especially when it's hot outside.
My refrigerator make three sizes of ice. I didn't notice it until I got it home. One is a round ball for cocktails, the other is small little squares and then the one on the door where they are standard cubes and you can select the crushed ice function.
Recliners are very common brother, so are fine mesh screens for windows, and no the mail man does not have a key to our mailboxes (it's a federal crime to steal mail, you get more jail time for that than assault or any other kind of theft)
Not THOSE kind of recliners. Most Americans don't spend $5000 on one like that.
If someone lives in an apt complex, the postal worker has a key.
Community mailboxes are getting more commonly installed in new subdivisions and yes, the mailman has a key to the back which opens all the boxes. Then each resident has a key to their individual box.
Still has a slot for outgoing mail though.
@@loverlyredhead I grew up in the 80s, and our neighborhood had community mailboxes for each end of the block. It was usually my job when I got home from school to walk the dog & get the mail. Every apartment I've lived in (including current one) has had community mailboxes as well
Vehicles here in the States are like shoes. You have different cars/trucks for doing different things.
True
Absolutely this
😂 ok
I have a summer car, good fuel efficiency and fun to drive, and a winter SUV, because my car stranded me in the snow four times the first winter I owned it. Now if the weather permits in the winter I will drive the car and if there's ice or snow it's the SUV.
If you can afford it. Most people do not have this luxury
UK expat here, move to the USA (North Carolina) relocated through my work. Money goes a very long way here, specifically NC. First, land and property are cheap (getting more expensive) but I have a moderate home, just under 3000sq ft, in ground pool, 4 bedrooms older home I’ve been modernizing on just under half an acre. Cost me less than a terrace home in Aldershot, 2 bedroom that was about 1000sq ft. It’s crazy living here because money goes a long way compared to the UK. Oh and the interest you pay on your home, is tax deductible, everyone does their taxes like a self employed person does in the UK, so you can deduct working from home space, medical mileage etc.. I miss family, my heart will always be with the UK, but tropical summers, cold winters and wonderful spring and fall weather can’t be beat. Southerns are fantastic people too and the English accent, goes a long way too! Did I mention air conditioning in the homes? Much love to you all xx
I think it was Reagan who once said that if you think things are expensive now, wait until they're "free".
The reason things are less expensive here in the US is largely because taxes are so much lower. With every product and service being taxed at every stage of its production, from raw materials all the way up to the final product, it all adds up, so that the consumer really has no idea how many taxes they are indirectly paying, as they are rolled into sale prices at every stage.
All that "free" healthcare and other services provided to Europeans come with a hidden cost, drastically reducing their real income, relative to Americans.
His mind is gonna blow when he finds out you can get sinks that you dont need to touch. I can just wave my hand in front of the sink and it will turn on and off. Is is needed? No. Is it great? YES.
To be fair...this is clearly the home of some very well-to-do people. This IS NOT the typical American home, though several features are typical. The garbage disposal, the window screens, air conditioning, and the recliner are fairly ubiquitous. More than one car per person, 5-6 TVs, and a lakefront view are not.
TVs in almost every room is pretty normal. But most people would kill for that lakefront view.
This is typical! I’ve never been in a house without these things and I’m 45 middle class!!!
Lakefront view is the only one that is rare...everyone else has all of the things on the list. Most everyones mailboxes on Long Island are on the house next to the front door
Recyliner chairs and sofas are in most every home. Some have one car for each of person and a bigger one to tow the camper or some have an old "station" car to take to the train station to go to work by train and leave the junk car at the station.
Wow, mindblowing that people have no screens on the windows! Yikes the bugs would get in, if I moved to a country without them I would have them put in.
I am single - 2 cars: 1) smart car to commute and run errands 2) pick up truck - for horses care and haul large items.
Smaller, well kept, non-fenced front yard with fenced in back yard with my veggie garden and fruit trees (and soon to have chickens!) and a place for the dog to run.
Kitchen - meh, about the same, frige not so fancy but lots of ice (have to have special filter for water because ours is 'hard').
No tv in my house - just one computer screen
Screens on all windows and - not mentioned - 'storm' or 'screened' doors too!
And yeah, most have recliners too.
My house is considered 'smaller' even though it has 3 bed and 2 baths (1700 sq ft) Not fancy like the one shown.
I also live in sw us - so air conditioner is mandatory!
Like your video!
The highest temperature ever recorded in the UK was 40.3°C (104.5°F), and it hits that every single year where I live. Two summers ago it got up to 47.7°C (118°F) where I live. This is the reason that we have A/C everywhere. Though I used to live in Seattle, WA and in-home A/C was less common.
Yes, the "cinema chair" lol, is very common if America. They have been for decades.
They've been in houses a lot longer than they've been in cinemas! 🙂
Middle Class American here - I would say this is a very affluent family that is NOT the norm in the US. I don't know anyone who has multiple cars per person. Typically one car per adult but I have known some who share one car. I've never seen a refrigerator with two icemakers and that looks like a very upscale fridge. Many of the homes I've lived in don't have garbage disposals, including the one I live in now. Where I live many people don't have a/c (but with climate change more and more people are getting it - my neighbors tend to have window units for one room). I have one television. Many people I know don't have a tv at all anymore because they watch what they want to on their laptops or phones or they aren't into tv. That view is extraordinary, but not all homes are like that. Again, pretty upscale there. We do tend to have front yards but often they have hedges or short fences around them. Regarding mail boxes, typically neighbors don't steal from them but there are theft rings that steal mail and peoples' identities. More and more mailboxes are replaced with locking varieties and the postal person has a universal key that opens them. (And I've heard of the post person's key being stolen too!).
For sure that family house looks rich. And even my parents are middle class. We have an because it would be insane not to on the East Coast. We don’t have a garbage disposal (the previous house we did) Our yards are generally open, I have seen some with front fences in the more bad areas.
I didn’t realize I was affluent.
My fridge looks like that and I’m far from affluent. The top ice maker is technically part of the door ice maker. That’s where the ice comes from for the door and you just have to pull it out if you want the ice in there
@padywac1970 Many Americans don't realize they are affluent, until they aren't anymore.
i have two cars- an everyday oen and a fun/project car that i enjooy- wifre has minivan and older son has car-
As an American, I just have to say that I want to live in this woman’s America, too! Her parents are definitely upper middle class, possibly upper class, &/or have worked hard & invested wisely to enjoy their retirement in such a place. Gorgeous home, gorgeous view, why the need for 4 cars & that many TVs, I have no idea. I could see having a car for each driver plus an extra if one of the daily cars was being serviced, since public transportation is a joke (at least in my area) so a car is necessary to go anywhere. Or if someone just wanted a fun car for weekend drives. (If we ever hit the lotto, that would be my hubby!)
We are in our mid-40s, a middle of the middle class family, soon to be empty nesters in the next couple of years. We purposely bought a smaller home (under 1300 square feet, small for modern suburbia) knowing our kids wouldn’t live with us forever, & we didn’t want to move again once we’d finally bought a house after 10 years of renting. Our backyard is fenced, we don’t have a garbage disposal (we have a septic tank, IYKYK), no ice maker but I buy 10 lb bags of crunchy ice to keep in our upright freezer, we own one car per licensed driver (our kids worked hard for & bought their own cars). We have always had 2 TVs so the kids didn’t have to watch what we watched if they didn’t want to, & vice versa. We have never allowed TVs in the bedroom, just personal preference, though smart phones now let you watch TV in every room. And we love our recliners - though we don’t like the electric ones, we prefer the old school lever style lifts - less to break & repair! If we ever were to move to Europe, I’ll remember to import our recliners!
We have that style mailbox, but we live in an older neighborhood. I receive mail here but I don’t mail stuff from my box - for safety, I take it to the post office. Most of the neighborhoods around us have community mailboxes located on a centrally located street, with dozens of small square individually keyed boxes. This makes it quicker & easier for the postal worker to deliver mail, vs stopping at every house. My neighborhood alone has over 400 houses, & it’s one of the smallest neighborhoods in our area.
It’s funny how non-Americans think Americans live, & vice versa. I enjoy watching home shows from here & abroad, & I’m always amazed at how different homes are just within America. We have a single story basic ranch style house, common in our area (Texas). I watch shows from the northeast with families in multi story homes & brownstones/townhomes, using vertical space to build because there’s not enough land to build out, so they have to go up. It’s a lifestyle I cannot imagine, living on 3-4 floors. (Two stories are common here.) Then I see folks in other countries, often Asia, residing in micro apartments & sharing a communal bathroom. This world is an incredible place, so full of diversity. It’s hard to paint all of a country with a broad brush.
I can see one car per person and a work truck or something that fits a specific purpose, not 3 of the same SUV and a 4-door car. I too wish I had so much disposable income that I could have doubles of my cars.
In Texas you need the SUV or Truck(dual cab) to go to the ranch and or your costal home. The family car to go out to concerts or restaurants and the sports car or sedan to go to work or go out on date nite. Then you need a vehicle at the ranch and your costal home just in case for other family members. Then u have to talk about the golf cart or similar vehicle to get around on the ranch or in the costal home. So yeah 4-8 vehicles. Now don’t get me started on the need for and EV if you want to look like your concerned about the environment. Then there is also the class B van to travel to other cities across the US plus you need your electric bikes and in some cases another vehicle your pulling with you van. No wonder I gotta work till I am hundred. Thanks goodness education debt is getting erased. 😂
@@paulgarcia621lol!!! I guess if I had more than one house, I’d need all of those cars! 😂 We have my crossover SUV for our family, & hubby has an old Ford Ranger for his daily commuter. That’s the extent of our vehicle collection. If we go out somewhere fancy, we just give my SUV a good scrub & vacuum, & enjoy our night out.
I do have various family that have farms & ranches. And yes, they do have work trucks specifically for that purpose. But they’re old beaters, nothing new or fancy. Who wants to drive something nice through the cactus & mesquite trees?!?
With out being coy I still have my 1993 Lexus SC 400 (old Betsy) never was able to part with her and still in mint condition.
@@paulgarcia621nice! Some things are worth keeping. Good old cars are definitely one of them!
Having air conditioning is a survival necessity in south Louisiana and Mississippi. I remember my dad putting in a window unit in our house in 1965. We lived in a rented "shotgun" house in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans (the part that was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina). I think we were one of the first families in our circle to have a/c in our house -- and we were dirt poor at that time. I now live in a 1 acre lot in a subdivision where most of us don't have fences around our entire property -- only the area closest to the back of the house to keep our pets in. It's also against the zoning in a lot of suburban areas to have fences in the front of houses in the US.
I died at the reaction to the recliner. I had no idea that wasn't commonplace elsewhere.
OK so there are a few things I would like to clarify as an American.
1. MOST people DON’T have more than one car per person. It usually is a car for each adult. There are occasions where there might be a company car/truck or a utility or fun (sporty) vehicle.
2. The faucet in the sink, that is a restaurant style faucet and not common, most are the kind that have a lever you raise lower, turn left or right for hot or cold water. That was a nice expensive one.
Most of the other stuff is accurate but on the nicer/pricier side of things. That is a nice house on a lake or river.
I have to laugh about the insulated cups. That is pretty bad but not far off the mark.
Adding to that, comments on air conditioning. She seemed to imply that everyone has it everywhere in the US, but actually there are places where it is fairly common not to have it, because it doesn't get that hot. For example: at high altitude (northern Rocky Mountains), at high latitude (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, costal Washington, Alaska, Maine), and Hawaii (because it is always 70-85 degrees, so if 85 isn't too hot for you, then you don't need it).
Outside of the "cities"
Most people where I live have alease 3 vehicles and people that live where it snows heavly or the roads ice over bad will have 3 or 4 vehicles. Most people tend to have two daily drivers that get good gas mileage and then they will have an SUV or truck. Some people may even have a "work truck" that they use to haul tools and stuff in or to drive to work that's located on rough roads.
Then you have people that live in places that get heavy snow or icy roads. These people will have a "junker" a vehicle meant to be driven in the snowy roads and if you slide off the road and damage it is doesn't matter because its your old vehicle or you bought it for 1k to 4k.
Yeah we keep a third vehicle that isn’t the best on gas usage, but is handy for when all the kids want to go somewhere or we have a lot of luggage. If you have the space to park it, it’s not that $$ to keep your last vehicle when they’re offering peanuts to trade it in.
it's pretty common to have 1 car for each adult and then one additional car, like i live in nyc so we don't have any cars but i grew up the suburbs and it's pretty typical to have 1 car for husband to drive to work, 1 car for wife to drive to work, and then a third car that's either older or like is a big SUV that's not super practical as a day to day vehicle but has specialized uses
Some places it's very common to have a couple of daily drivers, a fun car, and an SUV or truck for a couple.
A few things to say I live in West Virginia,USA , I live alone, I have a truck, car and a camper van, and several motorcycles. I don’t have a fence, I do have air conditioning, but no TV. I have screens on my windows, they also make screens that fit below the opened upper windows that are expandable, pop it in stretch it out to fit, then lower the upper window onto the frame of the screen. No ice maker, no disposal, an acre of yard , with a creek.
christ on a cracker what you need so many vehicles for? how?? assuming several motorcycles is at least three thats six vehicles!! lmao i'm barely scraping by being able to afford my POS hyundai lol i can't imagine going out and bying a truck, a van, and a few motorcycles
The key word is you live "alone" so you have more disposable income. If you don't have some of the things on this list, it's by choice bc you can definitely afford them 😉
@GameChanger597 , I live alone, single income household. It can be nice, but other times it can be difficult. No one to share bills or maintenance with. Also no one to share the housework and repairs with. So it can be a good thing or a challenging thing.
Nice!
I have screens on my chicken house windows.
Yes, stealing someone’s mail is a federal offense, not just petty theft. When I still live at home with my parents, my father would open up my mail. I would tell him it was a federal offense. So, he would say “I don’t care, it’s coming to my house”! The kicker is, he once worked for the post office!😂😂😂
Lol when I went to college, my mom would open my mail, then call and read it to me. I'd be like, madam, I'm reporting you to the police! 😂
I will send my kids a You've Got Mail MSG. Then a picture of it if it looks important. Like tax return/owed.Then they'll let me know if they're coming over soon or to open it and let them know what it is. If its just junk mail, I still give it all to them to do with what they want. Cuz. It's their mail. They still kinda get a kick out of opening it all. Except maybe the, you still owe this much. Lol
Yes, technically you could have reported him and gotten him in big trouble. Man, that is such a rude and disrespectful thing for your dad to do! I would never open someone else's mail, kid or no.
My stepfather was like that, it didn't matter whose name was on the letter he would open it and read it.
@@1024lafyeah some people can just be way too nosey… my moms husband (don’t like referring to him as my stepdad lol) opens other peoples mail a lot. He’s a very nosey person
The mail one only applies to mail boxes. Those aren't nearly as common as people think, due to movies. Literally my entire city doesn't have them at single homes (non-apartments). Nearly everyone here has a letterbox as well. Like, a little box hanging next to the door, and some even have those slots in the door like you might have seen in movies, too. But we have a secondary thing to send letters. My house has slot with a hinged little door, but it's IN THE WALL next to the door. To it slides down the little cutout on the inside of the wall. Then above that slot on the outside, we have a clip, you know, like you press down on the little ends, and the clip opens, like you'd use to close up a bag or something? We have a metal one that we put letters in that we want to mail. The postman knows that's what it's for and takes the mail from it to send out. Some homes here have 2 letter boxes. Where it's just an actual box attached to the house next to the door, with a lid you can open, and they will be labeled which one is for incoming, and which is for outgoing. And yes, technically your neighbors COULD steal the mail, but it's not common, because it's a federal crime, which is mandatory prison time. And mail theft like that, can easily be a 5 year prison sentence. Enough to stop any idea from most people.
Fences are eh..Some do some don't. Cars though..I can explain that. It's called having an extra just in case. You're telling me if your car suddenly has a problem, and you work 2 cities over (sometimes further here, my stepdad used to work over an hour drive away), you're just gonna walk? Or hope you can catch the bus? Nah, have a backup car. For example, like you said "one for mom one for dad", what if mom is at work and dad's car has a sudden problem and he needs to get to work? You have an extra car for that.
The reason we all have AC, is because the US generally gets WAY hotter than the UK. Like A LOT hotter. You guys were just recently complaining about it being a record high of the mid friggin 80s (30 for you guys). That's literally the LOW for the ENTIRE SUMMER here. Sometimes that even drags on into autumn, and starts late spring. This entire summer, I'm in the northern part of the US where it's nowhere near as hot as it CAN get, and it's constantly in the 90s (32-37 for you), and even for a week was around 100 (37.7 to you). And a couple years ago, it got 114 (45.5 for you), for a day. And again that's in the NORTH of the US. Literally Washington, the state on the top left of the US map. You can't go higher than the states at the top. Can you image those days in the south half where it's HOTTER!? Screw that. Not having AC can mean literally life and death for many people.
On the window, yet. that is netting. It's a mesh netting in which the holes are small enough that no bugs can get through it.
With the ice, I can't say 100% for sure, but I don't think she's right. I think that's just her mom lol Every single person I've ever met that has a fridge with a built in ice machine like that, does NOT make a separate thing of ice. It's not needed. They get the ice from the ice machine part. No need to make a whole big tub of it like that. We don't have one in this house, so we HAVE to make ice the old fashioned way, in the trays in the freezer, but not a single person I know does that, that has the built in ice machine.
I'm in southern California up to 120 in the summers, and I don't have air conditioning.
Pray for me, lol
Multiple cars per person isn't actually very common. Unless someone has a particular job that requires them to have a work vehicle that they're not allowed to use for personal errands or they live on a farm or something. (Farm truck vs personal car for town.)
Also my fridge only has one ice maker. That lady has a pretty fancy fridge.
Reclining couches are pretty common. Not always electrified, though.
I never saw a fridge with 2 ice makers. I never even had one. I did have a garbage disposal in the kitchen remodeled myself and always had a dishwasher and laundry room. Now that I have moved to a senior apartment I have no dishwasher and laundry room is down down the hall - one on each floor. Still don't have an ice maker.
Recliners are very common, electric reclining sofas aren't. Garbage disposals are a mixed blessing. Yes, they chew up the garbage, but they tend to clog up your drain. My wife and I each have one car each and one TV between us. We each have a laptop and a tablet, so why would we need more TV sets?
Above all, that house is far from typical. Around where I live, that would cost a good $700,000.
I have 2 cars, my wife has a pickup, I have a hot rod pickup and a hot rod roadster, she has a 2nd (36 Dodge) but it isn't running.
They have a lakeside house, it's probably more than that.
Electric reclining sofas are a lot more common that you might think.
@@rich7447 I mean, yeah if you live in a theater or grew up around all upper-middle class or wealthy people.
@@daedaluspicard9843 They weren't common when I was a kid (in my 50s).
In rural areas, if you want to work, you NEED a car because there is no public transportation. Some small towns have a very local bus route, but you pretty much need a car to get to the bus stops, which defeats the purpose. In a typical household, the parents have a car each for their jobs and the teenaged kids have a car so they can go to school or work after school.
And then maybe they have a truck to haul something or a bigger car to fit the whole family, I could see that as the reason somone might have more cars
Not just rural areas. There’s so much land and everything is spread far apart. Cars are necessities for most unless you live in a very large city.
@@silverkyre I moved from a bigger city to a more quiet rural one and yeah I can absolutely see a need for having an extra hauler if you live in a small town or further out in farm country but don't want to drive a 10 mpg, gas guzzler when you don't need to carry heavy loads.
@dpark189 yeah exactly. We loge in the city but my mom has an old truck and uses all the time to move bigger things. But if she isn't using for that she has a car to drive around. She used to also have a van but she sold it.
We get 120 degree summers in my area (49 for you) and I don't have ac.
This is what I have to do daily:
I have a window fan in a window in the front of the house, and at night I open a window in my bedroom, then turn on the window fan to do an air exchange until 10am, when the temps outside go over 80 degrees (27 for you). Them I close up the house and pray for the best until it cools down outside around 7pm.
BUT I have block out curtains or closed blinds on most windows, plus I have a pergola giving partial shade to the south and west side of the house. We also have tons of insulation and tile floors.
The "window screens" are a fine wire mesh. It lets the breeze through but all the flying creepy crawlies stay OUT. Some houses also have "screen doors" . It is an outer door that is basically a frame with the same fine wire mesh attached, it function is the same as the window screens. So on moderate temp days that is too warm for heating but not hot enough for air con, we can open the doors and windows and get fresh air flow with out all the "live stock" moving in.
To add to this, not everyone has air conditioning (I live in the north and it’s common to not have whole-house AC or even window/smaller AC units), so letting in a breeze through the doors and windows is great
My mailbox is down a hill that can get snowy and icy in the winter. I use 'informed delivery' from the post office. They scan the outside of my mail and post it on the site. I can see if I've had any deliveries or if what's in the box is important. That saves me from going out in -5 weather just to learn I've no mail, or it's all advertising. The recliners are typical and well-known as 'dad's chair.' Even my little 3 yr old grandson has his own mini-recliner.
It's a federal offense to steal from post box. Prison time
Yeah, because its such a widely enforced law...
@@Chris-fn4df Depends on the federal judicial district you live in as all federal crimes, just like state crimes, are charged and prosecuted based on the discretion of the prosecutor. I've witnessed many people go to federal prison or at least have their day in court for stealing low-value Amazon packages on porches while sitting through federal trials in a district court that had more aggressive prosecution overall. Other federal prosecutors elsewhere might've let them go. Because of the prevalence of Ring and other doorbell cameras, prosecution of mail theft is getting easier to prove so federal prosecutors have less excuses to not enforce. But there will always be prosecutors who decide not to enforce any type of crime. It's their call. But that's nothing unique to mail theft.
@@pd-ou1tg Maybe 10 yrs ago. Now carjacker, thieves and murders are out on the street.
There isn't anything valuable in your mailbox. The street value of your phone bill, or your letter from grandma, is zero dollars.
@@Tijuanabill let me catch someone taking anything out my mailbox. I have a surprise for them. The only person that should take mail from the box is the carrier or myself.
The screens / bugs thing is fcuikn hysterical. My ribs hurt, I can't stop laughing.
We live on a farm in Indiana and we have a beautiful view here but not every place in the US is the same as in this video. For instance, we only have 2 TVs in our home. And as far as the multiple vehicles go, some people have work trucks and then maybe a car they use for personal transportation. Also some people have cars that they rarely drive and for pleasure like a convertible or they have vintage car and they take them to car shows. There could be multiple reasons. Yes we all love our ice here and our A/C. It can get extremely hot and humid here and especially in parts of the southern US it can get miserable in the summer time. But growing up we didn’t have A/C. It was a fan in the window but we always had window screens. 😊
Multiple cars per person could be due to the work a person does, or a hobby a person does on the weekends. For instance, a guy might need a truck for work, but uses a car to pick up a date. Or someone might need a truck to pull their boat but uses a car that is cheaper on gas to drive around town. And yes, recliners (what you called a cinema chair) are very common in the US.
I was going to say, for the average couple without kids, it's not unusual to see two cars, sometimes three if one is really fuel efficient, or a truck.
The other thing is that if there are kids who are of driving age (or even if they're adults living at home with their parents) they might (kids), or will (adults living with parents), have their own cars.
and also not everyone trades in a car, they might also get passed down to a kid and then when that kid is grown up and gets their own car they just end up keeping the old one since they already have a newer car and have no reason to trade it in to a dealer.
@@zamboughnuts Yes, exactly.
Yep, and I know people that have a car for work commuting, a truck for the occasions when they need to haul stuff and/or pull a trailer, and a minivan for when they want to take the whole family somewhere.
We have a farm truck that gets bad mileage so we don't use it for non-farm errands. We also have a camper and a car (2 people)
American here:
1. Yep - neighbors can access your mailbox (when they look like the one in the vid), but it's a federal offense (illegal nationally). There are lock box style for shared spaces like apartments.
2. No fences in front is definitely normal for suburban life. The back yard is usually fenced but it's a toss whether the fence is tall or short - really depends on the neighbors and area.
3. Multiple cars is a thing but I wouldn't say that's a rule. My parents have 2 cars for 2 people, my wife and I have 2 cars for 2 people, my sis has 1 car for 2 people. FWIW I'm a car nut, too.
4. AC is a NEED where I live in the southern US. I hear Europeans complain about temperatures and when I do the conversion to °F it becomes apparent we are in extremely different climates. For example, in London the mean daily max in July is 23.6°C while our mean daily max in January is 27.1°C.
5. We do have window screens, but reference #4 to get a feel for how often we open those windows. Other parts of the country are much more temperate, though, so use windows a lot.
6. We do have a sink like what she's showing but that's usually only in high end kitchens (we splurged on our kitchen, but have a modest house). We do not have a waste disposal.
7. Ice is real and I can confirm that in France you'll get 1 piece of ice if you ask and none if you don't. This is extremely accurate. I do have an ice tray with a scoop for the ice, but we do not have a door ice maker.
8. Recliners are very common, but we don't have any. We like the Stressless which I suppose is more European in design. My in-laws use recliners extensively and my parents have a chair and a couch that both recline.
9. We have one TV. I don't know what kind of rich person BS she's peddling. We can't have basements here due to water level, so there's no man cave in our house and I never grew up with a TV in the bedroom so et voila we don't have one either. We do, however, have multiple computers so maybe that offsets the TV requirement.
As an aside, I live in a city that is too small to be considered big but too big to be considered small. Essentially what that means is we get decent amenities but still get to have a yard and good sized housing. Our house is on the smaller side here but it would be considered massive by French standards. That and our bathrooms are just unequivocally better - even my extremely cramped bathrooms stand head and shoulders above the ones I experienced in France.
7:11 This specific faucet is a bit fancy (Honestly, the whole house is a bit fancy. Its a freaking lake house!) , but most kitchen faucets have a sprayer option either in the main faucet itself, or a separate sprayer attachment. Garbage disposal are common, and not ubiquitous, and are not that expensive, maybe about $100.
That refrigerator is not common at all. That's like a $4000 appliance.
Re: cars. I usually have 4 vehicles. A “daily driver”, a pickup truck, a “summer” car (or collectable car) and an RV, and sometimes a motorcycle, too! I will usually have a snowmobile and a 4 wheeler as well !
I’m a Canadian who lives in the BC mountains, though.
And my wife has her car, too!
Peace
A lot of people have a truck and a car too once kids are 16 they probably have them
Chances are her folks have a fishibg boat and/or a pontoon and some sea-doos.
@@KS-ip5xn I can think of a lot of reasons for it . Work truck , small business . My dad always had more cars than could be driven because he liked to buy sell trade and fix them too
My family would save their old cars and hand them down to a teen driver. Then, they would go finance a newer car. I mean a car only lasts so long, and if a teen is coming to that age it makes more sense to just hand over the old one instead of buying a used or newer one. I feel like that's a typical American thing that happens with families.
I live in Illinois . We had the same when I was a kid . But now , just one car .
Are you being serious that you don't have recliners in homes there? I feel like that is standard furniture in the U.S.
I’ve had a recliner in my house since I was a kid in the 1960’s.
i wouldn't say electric still maybe old recliner you pull
and has been for decades
Yea man that screen is something Europe needs to make standard. It’s insane how it’s not normal.
My MIL was British and she lived stateside for several years before returning. She said one of the best things we had were window screens. She hated bugs.
I am 74 and do remember old houses without screens but you could buy telescoping screens called push screens and insert them in the open window and then pull the window down on them to hold them in place. I had to buy some when we rented our first apartment in the upstairs of an old house.
@@sandratuttle They still make those screens.
I have my mini van for kids and sports stuff, my husband has his car, then we have one specifically with 4 wheel drive that we got specifically for vacations. The last several years my whole family takes a vacation to 4x4 beach in NC where there are no roads and you have to drive 10 miles down the beach to get to the house. Also useful for harsh winters when we get lots of ice and snow. Then we have a pick up truck for what everyone else uses pick ups for lol. Lumber, bags of soil and gardening stuff, tools, heavy yard equipment, etc. and my 19 year old daughter has her own car.
We don’t buy anything new, always used or from auctions. Everything is paid off.
And we have 8 TVs 😂🤦🏻♀️
No recliners though.
I reside in Phoenix, AZ, where air conditioning is an absolute necessity. We endure more than 120 scorching days with temperatures exceeding 100°F (37°C), and a staggering 55 days surpassing 110°F (43°C). Suffice it to say, air conditioning is a big deal here. 😄
Not quite as bad here, but I live smack dab in the swamps of Florida and god I could not imagine a house without AC, especially in the summer.
Y'all really in the wilderness huh 😂
you forgot to mention the 6-10 days over 120
@@dragonspirit996 i'm up in duval. lived in az too. i'm still not sure which is worse. there's a point (in a dry heat) that it just doesn't matter
@@dragonspirit996Yes!!!
I live in FL too and we had no electricity after a hurricane. Spent 4 days without ac…. I was dying by day 1!
Trust me, if you have a septic system you DO NOT have a sink disposal. It would fill up the entire tank eventually.
I'm on septic and well system & we have a garbage disposal. But I'm very careful about what goes in it too. As with the toliets too. I live in an updated 1860's house.
@@ayabokti161 Everything I was always taught was that you really shouldn't. Most of our food, except or meat, of course goes into the garden compost pile, less soil to buy that way
@@currentsitguy My last house had a septic system, so I let as little as possible go down the drain. The chickens got most of it, lol. But we had a garbage disposal that was designed especially for septic systems; it ground food super fine and injected an enzyme into the system with every use.
I have a septic AND a well AND a sink disposal. Been in this house for over 12 years and haven't had any issues BUT I have the septic serviced routinely and am aware of what goes down the disposal daily.
I can’t believe you don’t have air conditioning OR screens! Get some fricking screens!
Yea you can buy recliner chairs, couches or sectional sofas that have the recliner options in different seats
The mail thing, yes normal and people don’t tamper with your mail. The recliner thing is fairly common too. Also, screens are on all our windows, yes. And AC is common as well, even if it’s just a window unit and doesn’t work super well. The rest of the stuff is stuff you see in the homes of people who are better off than I was/am. I have 1 TV, I don’t have a recliner, I don’t have an ice make in my fridge. I do have a garbage disposal in my sink but I didn’t have one growing up. And I have one car and even growing up, my family usually just had one car to share.
While the homeowner has to buy and install the mailbox it is actually Federal Property. Tampering with the mail or mailbox is a federal felony. The postal service actually has its own force of postal inspectors to investigate and arrest people.
In my area a neighborhood had about 20 mailboxes vandalized in one evening. One of the guys that did it had a prior criminal record. He got a 18 month prison sentence and a $12,000 fine along with restitution.
I never thought about that before, but you're right. WE have to pay for, install and upkeep Federal property.
@@suran396 So who do you think pays for the construction and upkeep of anything involved with the government?
The government doesn't have a penny the taxpayers didn't give them. (outside of all the bribe money...the big guy needs his 10%).
@@JoeBLOWFHB well, yes. Of course. This is more direct, though, and I just never realized I don't own my mailbox.
@JoeBLOWFHB The post office isn't funded with taxpayers' money.
@@srwater1 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 ok...hold on....nope, still.laughing..🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Sorry but I had to laugh at his expression and shock to learn we have screens on all our windows to stop bugs from entering. I can’t imagine living where there is no screens on windows. Someone should start up a small business with screens, they will grow profit extremely fast in other countries. @L3WG Reacts, the screen are a mine mesh wire or plastic form with the tiniest hole spaces covering the entire screen, no bugs of any kind will fit through them. Love opening the windows in Spring to get a nice breeze in the home.
MOST bugs can't get through, but lately I've been having a problem with tiny little gnats getting through my screens. Drives me crazy!
They're called no-see-ums. They can get through and they are almost invisible blood suckers. They aren't everywhere in the country though.
Tea tree oil, apple cider vinegar, and water in a spray bottle and then drench the outside of your window and the surrounding area/plants. It works. Two summers ago I had hundreds of flies in my house because of some bushes immediately in front of my house. I was ready to yank the whole lot out, but didn't want to hurt the feelings of the person who planted them for me for free and lives next door. I figured what the heck, I'll give it a try before getting rid of the bushes. I had maybe 6 flies in my house this past summer and that's pretty normal. You might have to refresh after a rain, but other that that it lasted me the entire summer and fall doesn't show up until October where I live. There are recipes online, but I did maybe 20+ drops of tea tree oil, half cup of ACV, and filled the rest with water in a smaller spray bottle you can find in the beauty section.
@@randalmayeux8880 get some stem fruit fly spray and spray the screen it’s oily so it sticks to surfaces and kills all the tiny fliers instantly. I love the stuff I keep the aerosol and regular spray bottle around as in the summer time we get lake flies it even kills them instantly. Though you might have to clean All the dead knats off your screen 😂
The neighbors can have my mail - there’s never anything I want to keep.
😂😂😂
They can pay the bills while they have it 😋
😂😂😂 Facts!!!
We have a communal mailbox in our subdivision in CA. Where there are little boxes all in one area and we have a key to open it and a slot to put Mail in, what you want the post man to take.
I guess similar to an apt complex but it's outside like one for ever block- most homes built late 1980s and later have this,
It's just the older homes that have one mailbox per house.