A couple of weeks ago, we attended a vernissage (an art show opening) at this little chapel-converted-to-a-gallery, which is just outside of town. The featured artist is named Kathryn Holford, and she currently lives with her husband (a novelist) in La Cressonnière — the home we used to rent when we lived here before.
We loved talking with Kathryn and her husband and we bonded over the delight of living in such a special home, and unexpectedly falling in love with this particular part of Normandy. Her husband commented that the people who live here are by-and-large content and happy — and I agree. It’s a sweet life here.
Our town, Argentan, is not a well known tourist spot and people often ask us why we aren’t in Paris, or in the South of France, or a more popular spot, or a bigger city — and we find it a bit hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been here. We fell in love with this area and we fell hard.
I think one of the things we love (though it for sure takes getting used to) is the slower pace of life. For example, the hours of business. I can’t speak for Paris, or other regions in France, but this is what business hours are like in Argentan:
-Everything is closed on Sunday.
-Many services are closed on Monday too.
-On the days that shops and services are open, they close from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM for lunch. To be clear, this isn’t just small mom-and-pop shops, it’s even big brand places like Orange (which is the French AT&T/Verizon) or big clothing stores, or the car dealerships.
-Stores and services close for the day at 6:00 PM. A few might stay open until 7:00 PM. And this means the big grocery stores too. If you haven’t done your grocery shopping by 7:00, you’re out of luck.
-Restaurants are open from Noon to 2:30 PM, and then again at 7:00 PM until 9:30 PM. If you’re wanting a late lunch or early dinner, your best bet is a bakery. They open early and stay open until around 6:00 PM — though by 2:00 PM, they’ve likely run out of things like sandwiches or quiche that can make a quick meal (people here just don’t do late lunch or early dinner — they eat at specific times and that’s it).
-The gym Ben Blair joined opens at 9:00 AM, and closes at 8:00 PM, on Monday through Saturday — except for Wednesdays when it opens at noon. There are no classes or work-out options before work or school — the first classes begin at 10:00 AM.
-The open air farmer’s market is just on certain days and for limited hours.
-There are exceptions. Like the grocery stores are often open through lunch. And the local bakeries and pharmacies will each take turns opening on Sundays — because bread and medicine are essentials!
And even with the general times I listed above, stores and offices each tend to have unique hours. So you really have to think about what you want to get done, and plan for it, and take your time. There aren’t many rush options, or last-minute options. You have to slow down, you can’t be urgent about everything. Today, you can stop at the farmer’s market, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to visit the bank.
The hours aren’t set up with consumer ease being the priority, they’re set up with quality of life being the priority.
It all feels a bit more civilized, you know? There are a lot of customs and practices in place to protect your home life, your time with your family, and your personal life.
Another example of the slower pace of life is how laundry is handled here. French homes often don’t have dryers. In fact, our current Airbnb doesn’t have one. And my closest friend here, Caroline, who is a mother of four, doesn’t have one and never has.
The laundry process? You wash a load, and either hang it outside, OR, if you don’t have a garden, or the weather is wet, everyone has drying racks you can set up inside the house. So you might have them in your living room for a couple of days as your clothing dries. At our Airbnb, the washing machine is in a barn/garage/utility room connected to the house. We have the drying racks set up there — there’s plenty of room — and don’t need to bother about the weather.
Depending on the material and thickness and weather, items might dry within a few hours, or they might need to dry overnight, or they might need 48 hours+. And yes, there’s a huge energy savings from not using a drying.
After items are dried, almost everything goes under the iron. The air drying makes everything a bit crispy — almost like built in starch, and the iron shapes it right up.
Not using a dryer slows down the laundry process significantly. And not just the drying time. Hanging each individual item to dry on racks takes quite a bit longer than throwing everything into the dryer. And the washers are smaller, so you do smaller loads.
The whole process simply takes longer, so there’s not really a last minute laundry option. If it’s 10:00 at night and your teen needs something washed for the next day, you can spot clean it, but that’s about it. You have to slow down. You can’t be urgent about everything.
Also, it’s a long enough process that it’s not worth washing something casually. Obviously certain things, like underwear and socks, get washed after one wear, but for everything else, you really consider whether it needs a wash or can be worn again. On that note, it’s quite common — especially in preschool and elementary school — for the kids to wear the same outfit every day, all week long. They eat neatly, keep their clothes clean, and just keep wearing them. They may even change out of their school clothes and put on play clothes as soon as they get home.
There is a laundromat in town, with medium and large machines, and big dryers, but it’s not cheap and it’s closes at 8:00 PM. The price is about $6 for a medium load of washing, and $11 for a large load — and the big dryer is about $1.75 for 10 mins. For reference, it takes at least 30 mins to dry a towel.
One more example of the slower pace is our experience buying a car — which we have chosen but still haven’t picked up yet! We found the care with an online search, and drove to Caen (about 40 minutes away) on a Wednesday to test drive it. The next day we emailed them to let them know we wanted purchase it and asked when we could pick it up. That was two weeks ago — and it won’t be ready for us to pick up until tomorrow. Hah!
Everything just takes more time here. You’ve got to slow down. You’ve got to keep your to-do list reasonable. The whole pace of life here just slows everything down. My family life in America is so busy, busy, busy, that it definitely takes a while to get used to the slower pace here — not being able to run out to Target or the grocery store at 9:00 PM is an adjustment. But we really love how protected our family time is.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. If the business hours I describe above were implemented where you live, would it affect your shopping habits? Would the laundry situation drive you crazy? Or does the slower pace of life sound appealing?
I love everything about this post and living abroad. I’d move back to Europe if I could. I’m from The Bay Area in California where life is pretty fast paced and there is always a sense of urgency. I wish everyone could experience a slower life. At first it might seem like such an impossible contrast to the lifestyle in the US, but once you adjust you realize the value put on time for you, your family and friends. Businesses shouldn’t be open 24/7 for both the sanity of the workers, but also for our own sanity. We would all be calmer and happier, live longer and have less disease if we lived a slower more enjoyable daily routine. Thanks for this post. I loved reading it all.
It’s always felt to me like so many errands (I’m in the Bay Area) are because of our over-consumerist lifestyle. Do you find consumerism to feel different there? The plethora of dollar stores here blows my European friends’ minds!
This is a good point – I think we create busyness for ourselves due to the consumer culture here. The more we want, the more we work to have, the more we go to buy, the more things we have to take care of.
Living in a place sounds amazing! I am suffocating with the “conveniences” of living where I do in the US. I know I can control this better than I have, but I also seems hard to eliminate things. I think I could do without the dryer, especially if we got rid of a lot of our clothing bc there are 7 of us.
Pro-Dryer here! We currently live in Hawaii, but we’ve lived in both Italy and Germany. We had a dryer both times and I’m so glad! The last thing I want is more time spent doing laundry, and I haven’t used an iron in years! haha. I’ve always had somethings that I air-dried, but the problem always was if the drying took too long (more than a couple hours) the clothing smelled stinky. (especially bad for towels and jeans) I can’t stand that musty moldy smell. And then since I don’t iron, I always threw those clothes in the dryer for a little to soften them up. Some people try to hang dry clothes here…in Hawaii! haha. Between the frequent rain showers and the humidity this is ridiculous to me, and guaranteed to be stinky.
I love the generally slow pace of European life. Sure sometimes I missed the conveniences, but I loved it overall. The red-tape was what I could never get used to…like your multiple bank trips to open an account, or multiple phone calls, and/or written letters to officially cancel services like internet or phone.:)
I love the wearing of the same clothes for the week for the kids. When my kids were little part of the bed time routine was me declaring clean or dirty for each kid from head to toe. This usually meant shirts and pants got worn multiple times before washing. (socks and underwear were always dirty:)
I fell in love with France two years ago and out of all of the wonderful aspects of the country, people and culture, the slower pace of life is the biggest draw to me as an American. Even when finishing coffee or a meal at a café or restaurant, you are never hurried away from your table by a busy waitstaff. We were invited to relax and linger. It was wonderful but sad that we were not used to slowing down.
Another country that is similar is Israel – the observation of the sabbath there is a beautiful thing to witness. I wish that hurried life in America could so easily be put on hold one day each week!
Your post has reminded me of things that felt like a massive adjustment when we first moved to the UK, but that I can realize now I’ve adapted to – like the shop hours. How everything takes so much longer, like banking or buying a car. It comes up less often once those initial settling in tasks are accomplished, but it still pops up if I need a quote on house work, for example… responding to emails or phone calls can take people/companies days to weeks, vs. the states where I usually got a response back within hours. I appreciate your perspective, though – that it is about work-life balance, and it’s helped me to step back and feel less urgency about when I respond to things. :)
Other areas I’ve noticed a big difference – because of the different expectation of work hours and the flexibility I see more dads around for kids’ activities, or both parents. In the states we almost never saw dads out during the day at the park or school things. We also have many more friends with flexible work arrangements – parents may work 3 to 4 days a week and stagger their schedule, or more people seem able to work from home a couple days a week.
And admittedly I did make a tumble dryer part of my request when we looked at houses, as with many little ones I couldn’t bear the idea of needing to hang everything in unpredictable weather. We had done that on previous visits and I can handle the dorm sized fridge and separate hot/cold water taps so you’re burning or freezing your hands, but I did want the option of quicker laundry.
We lived in Zurich for 6 months this year and had a similar experience. There were probably a few more options since it was a bigger city but we were still limited by shop hours, restaurant hours, laundry times, etc. I felt frustrated by it while I was living there and was looking forward to returning to my late night Target runs in the states. But, upon returning home I felt so stressed and tired. I think decision fatigue was part of it. In the USA I can do whatever I want/need whenever I want, so what do I do first? In Europe my days were based on what was available.
Interesting discussion! I live in Italy and only got my first dryer last year and my kids are teens and pre-teens. I have never had a garden and got fed up of all the washing hanging around the house in the winter. That said, in the summer I still put it out to dry on our tiny balcony as it just feels like such a waste to use electricity to dry it when the sun is shining. Old habits die hard!
Another comment on air-dry vs. drier-dry. I live in the U.S., but my dryer’s heating unit stopped working 3-4 years ago and I couldn’t afford to replace the dryer. It still works, it just takes a lot of cycles to dry clothes. I’m not complaining because I bought the dryer from the previous owners of my house and, to their memory, it was their only dryer, so that means that it is still working after 41 years. So, I air dry (inside) pretty much everything and then pop it in the dryer on “air fluff” to get out the starchiness. I just have to plan my washing – no last minute laundry any more. :)
My daughter lived in Paris for 6 years and I visited often. I have to admit to feeling a little anxiety on Saturdays, wracking my brain to see if there was anything I needed before shops reopened on Monday. Did I have enough food? Staples? Am I organized enough to make it through the weekend? Are you starting to feel like you have settled into the pace in terms of what you need to have in your home for your family? I do admire the pace and always vow I’m going to practice that schedule when I return home and I guess I do to a certain degree…
“In America there is a QUANTITY of life while in England (or anywhere on the continent) there is a QUALITY of life.”
I’m a Brit who has called Chicagoland home for the last 21 years and my friend, a fellow Brit, shared this with me one day while we were talking about what we love and appreciate about living in the states and what we miss about our homeland. Her words are so true!
This sounds simultaneously idyllic (as a worker) and anxiety-inducing (as a consumer)! I’m from Singapore and moved to the UK for university. I had a slight nervous breakdown the first week I was there walking on the streets at 6pm with all the shops closed. Was I looking at 3 long years with nothing to do at night? I was used to shops closing at 9pm on regular days and late night shopping going until midnight. Then I got used to it and had a really difficult time moving back to Singapore after uni, where life moves at a breakneck speed. A few years later, I moved to New York City for grad school and felt like it was a happy medium. Even though things are open on Sundays, New York is unusually quiet on Sunday mornings. Life moved quickly, but there was a rhythm of work and play and the changing seasons really helped. People grumbled but almost expected there would be repair works on subway lines on the weekends. People in Singapore would complain about a subway that was delayed by 10min.