Washing Machine Madness

Washing Machine
My real issue surrounding washing machines is the inexplicable jargon and code they display on the front. These nonsense icons and random letters and numbers make little comprehension to a normal well-adjusted person such as myself. When all I want to do is quickly wash a few shirts for the upcoming week, I find I have to search through libraries and trawl through the internet looking for translations of said hieroglyph-type drawings on the machines dials. All I want is the quick-wash function! Which – by the way – is only available once you’ve figured out which part of the drawer the powder goes in. Its usually a one in three chance, so every third wash comes out okay. Which is fine because I can simply re-wash the other two there and then. But when I come to wash my clothes again a week later, I have forgotten the correct procedure, and so the whole process starts again. It can get very frustrating.

In fact, all I ever want from my washing machine is the quick-wash function. Why do I need to tell my machine what I’m putting in it? As far as I can work out (and I could be wrong), my washing contraption does not have a dog-cycle, nor does it have a dish-cycle or a sofa-cycle. To the best of my translating abilities, I believe it does have:

– Woolen – lightly soiled
– Woolen – heavily soiled
– Woolen – high temperature
– Cotton – lightly soiled
– Cotton – heavily soiled
– White – cotton
– White – lightly soiled
– White – heavily soiled
– White – low temperature
– Colour-fast
– Colour-non-fast
– Quick cycle
– Short spin
– Long spin
– Super spin
– Drain cycle
– Various temperatures that can be combined with all of the above.

It has more choices and buttons than a Saville Row tailor! Tell me, do you really know what every single button does on your machine?

I swear I only bought the washing machine because I was getting fed up of having to cart all my laundry down to the river. I do not want to launch a rocket into space, nor do I want to break the sound barrier on a vibrating cube. I just want my clothes to be clean.

My washing machine scares me because I don’t know what it is fully capable of. For all I know, I could innocently set it on Super Spin one day and find out it is a champion ballroom dancer. And not knowing this worries me. Am I going to come home one day and find my pet rabbit in the microwave?

And microwaves! When did they get complicated!?