Comparing and Contrasting Australian and American Homes

Below you will find photos of things that are relatively standard in Australian homes.  I realize that these things are found in other parts of the world as well and are not necessarily exclusive to Australia.  However, as most of my audience here on She'll Be Right is American, so I wanted to include things that are not necessarily found in most standard American homes.  Hope you enjoy!

The wall heater!  Central heating doesn't appear to be as common as in the United States (at least for the homes in the colder climates.)  Each room in our home has an electric wall heater.  Running these non-stop could cost you a wad of dosh, so we only try and use them as much as needed and would never run them if we were not home.

I'm sure a very American reaction to this picture is:  It's so small!  But really, this size fridge is pretty standard here.  The United States is one of the few countries I've encountered where massively huge refrigerators exist.  Each time I come home from traveling/living abroad, I always marvel (to myself) at American refrigerators and find myself questioning why we as Americans even need that much room.  Perhaps to accommodate the five pound jars of mayonaise we buy at Costco???  Anyway, an interesting fact about fridges here is that you are expected to own one, even if you are a renter.  It would be somewhat rare to come across an unfurnished apartment that included a refrigerator... and a washing machine as well, while we are at it.

The electric kettle, for your cuppa (black tea with milk and sugar is the most common variety), day, night, and every time in between.  The electric kettles are awesome because they heat up super-duper quick.  These are so popular that you can buy them at essentially any kind of store (home goods, grocery stores, dollar stores, etc.) here.

A few things to share about the sockets (called "power points" here)... 1) The voltage here is 240 V; in the States, it's half of that at 120 V... you better bring a converter (and not just a plug adapter, for heaven's sakes!) if you want to charge your electrical items appropriately and not fry them, lest they blow up in your face. (Okay, I don't know if your appliance will actually blow up in your face, but why risk it?) 2) Most of the sockets have those three holes (some lack the bottom hole).  To me, it looks like face that's crying, but that's neither here nor there.  3) Sockets here come with a little flip-switch to turn the electricity at that power point on and off.  As you can see, the power point with the little orange strip showing is currently turned on.

Hooray for bathroom heat lamps!  I love these... I turn them on every time I enter the bathroom.  What can I say, I like to stay warm while brushing my teeth!

I feel like this could be a picture in one of those children's magazines, where they show a close-up of a larger photo and you have to guess what the picture is.  I'll spare you the agony and just tell you, okay?  This is the toilet flush button.  On the right side, you have the half-flush, for those times you don't need much water pressure during the flush.  On the left, the whole flush for when you want as much force as possible.  I should also mention that the water level in the bowl itself is extremely low (like it is in most of the world, for both developed and developing nations), compared to American toilets.  That's another thing I find myself thinking about upon returning to the States... Why on earth do we need so much water in the bowl?  To answer another question I seem to encounter fairly often:  No, the toilets do not flush the opposite way just because I am in the Southern Hemisphere.  Sorry to disappoint, but you'll be happy to know that due to the Coriolis Effect, water from a sink or bathtub does drain anti-clockwise.
I learned all about this when I was in Ecuador years ago, visiting a small theme-park/outdoor science museum located on the equator.  You could do all these cool experiments, like balance an egg on the head of a nail, which I guess only works on the equator (I even got a certificate for being able to do it!)  They also had a weird (yet, slightly out of place) exhibit on how to make shrunken human heads!  But that's a story for another time, and has very little (if nothing at all) to do with Australian/American abodes.