Washing Machine

Emergency Contact and I were recently given a washing machine. The one we had was working ok-ish but the gift one was considerably newer and is a dryer as well. Dryer and washer all in one means one less white-good in a small flat. Front-loader means space to put your washing basket on top. Given means we don’t pay any money. Win win win.

(For those about to warn me about dryers - yeah I know. Sydney electricity prices are about to go up by 1000 per cent and they use more power than a fun park and wear out your clothes and will give your cat fleas and will attempt to annex the neighbour’s laundry and are the root of all evil. We use it six times a year at most and usually because we have no dry sheets and it’s bedtime… in winter.)

It has not been plain sailing though, getting, and getting used to, a new washing machine. If Blonde Powerpuff Girl happens to read this, don’t worry, I love having it… now… and am deeply grateful, but that doesn’t make for a blog.

I could carry our last washing machine by myself. It was a mid-sized Fisher & Paykel of 5.5 kg washing capacity and was largely motor and drum. Lifting it wasn’t the easiest job in the world, but I could get it in and out without help and I reasoned that, with the advancement in tech, this new jobby would be lighter again.

I was basing this on my experience with fridges. Our 30-year-old Kelvinator (built to work for at least 30 years) weighed as much as the moon, and the modern Electrolux replacement is twice the size but less than half the weight. (I’ll be interested to see how long it lasts though.)

I was warned that my homespun theories on weight were not entirely accurate, and these days I listen to people when they warn me about things being heavy. I’m not as bullet-proof as I once was so I enlisted the aid of Gooby for added brawn.

With complicated post-work travelling arrangements in place, I met Gooby and we bolted over to grab the machine. But the first attempt didn’t work because of a crossed wire in communications. The owner wasn’t in. That forced Gooby and me to go home and play video games and eat Toobs. Not a total loss.

Second attempt was the next day, but Gooby couldn’t be there, so I went back to my original position of “how hard can it be?”

I’ll tell you. The new washer-dryers are as heavy as a bad acid trip and twice as difficult to keep a grip on. You see, it was raining and I was wet which meant that every time I came into contact with a bit of detergent, it got slipperier and slipperier and it was a shiny metal white-good with no handles to start with. The original owner couldn’t help because he had a broken knee and EC had decided the appropriate removalist outfit was thick soled wedges and a low cut, long dress. Nothing for it but to quickly enlist the help of a mate, Mr Who, who happens to live around the corner.

Mr Who appeared in 30 seconds which was good as there was a time element to all of this. The original owner was also moving out of the place while we were standing there, and was not going to take the machine with him. A fairly new washer-dryer left on the side of the road in Glebe was going to last as long as it takes two uni-students to say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Mr Who was very helpful at the pick up end, but he had places to be immediately after and couldn’t come to the loading-in end. I had to re-enlist the help of Gooby to help carry it into the flat, but at least the machine was in our possession and it could happen at our convenience.

So, the machine was in the ute and it was raining. Guess what I had padding the machine? A mattress. (Yes, I’ve gone back to owning a sodden lump of mattress in the back of the ute. How I missed the good old days.)

After that it all went rather smoothly. Gooby was gettable on the way through and other than severing a couple of his fingers, the machine slotted into place with fairly little fuss.

We had a new washing-drying machine. Yay. It arrived in a bit of a panic, but as the kids say, “It’s all good.” The hoses fit, the outlet hose went nicely into the tub, the filters were clean and in good nick and the holy crap look at all those dials. How the hell do you make this thing fondle your smalls? I didn’t see a single diagram that made any sense. I bet I knew where the instruction book was, too. In a soggy box outside an empty semi in inner-west Sydney. I was going to have to use my brains. As the newly re-soaked mattress in the back of the ute demonstrated, though, my brains appear to have shrunk in the wash. Stand back.

First, to the internets. So many related models had their instructions on PDF, but not our model. I read around the subject as much as I could stand before pernicious boredom set in and I said to myself that I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing.

Three loads of ruined clothes later and I decided I didn’t entirely know what I was doing. The colours were running. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw modern clothing dye run. What was going on? Cotton setting. Middle of the range 60 minute wash. That ought to be right.

Still, faint heart never won clean undies. Again I gingerly put on a wash with identically coloured items and chose the cotton setting and decided to give them a nice long 95 minute soak and wash.

I stuck my head into the laundry about an hour into the wash and could feel the heat pouring off the machine. It was fantastic. Not only does the machine spin like it wants to grow up to be a large hadron collider, it likes to generate similar temperatures. Another load of ruined clothes. This was getting embarrassing so I decided to work a bit harder at finding the instructions. After finding out what the model was called in other countries, I finally tracked down the instruction book and downloaded it.

It made for quite interesting reading.

All those numbers at various places around the dial were not times, like I was used to with the old washer. With most old washers, the more you wound the dial around, the longer the wash.

No, no, no.

Those numbers were temperature settings. Like any good little plague-era washerwoman, I was boiling our clothes.

Once I knew that, I went back and looked at the dial and realised that those cute little symbols down there at certain intervals weren’t Galactic Empire Tie-Fighter Squadron Decals, they were snow flakes. I bet snowflakes mean a cold wash.

So, the washing machine is in, I know how to use it and everything is yay. I wonder if it should be making that noise…