dirty laundry

Since moving in to our furnished flat here in Edinburgh, I have been trying my best to figure out how the appliances work. I usually just take a brief look at the control panel and then straight away I power it on. Most things have been working the way I expect them to.

The washing machine however has been a completely different story. The buttons and front panel instructions are all labeled in English. So, no problem understand instructions there. I found out where the soap, bleach and all that good stuff goes in. So far so good. But when I put the clothes in and turn the knob to perform what I think is a 40 min wash of our whites, it ends up running a good 2.5 hours. I have tried various settings, various loads but have never been able to figure out why a 30, 40 or 50 min wash always took at least twice as long to finish.

Normally I really do not care if it runs 40 mins or 120 mins. Too bad about the energy consumption but other than that, I usually just switch it on and check only after 2 hrs anyways. However, last weekend I suddenly realized that I had missed doing laundry for a couple of weeks and I badly needed to catch up or we had to go shopping for new clothes.

I suppose I have mentioned or referred to the fact that I am a mom somewhere on this blog. Well, the kiddo is 2.5 yrs old. In movie theatre and air ticket terms she has just started qualifying for a half-price or reduced price ticket. However in laundry terms, she is the equivalent of 2.5 regular adults who play contact sports in the wet green grass and slush everyday. Throw in the fact that we are now trying to toilet train her and you can imagine the mountain load of dirty laundry waiting to be cleaned. Before you actually think we live in a sty, let me reassure you that all of Kiddo’s toiled soiled clothes are washed everyday, despite the 2.5 hrs it takes. Its just the rest of her dirty clothes that get washed on weekends and even that is a substantial load by itself.

Anyways, I digress. I had at least 6 loads of laundry to do and given each load would take 2.5 hrs, it meant a good 15 hrs of this nonsense and it was already 11:00 am. I was determined to find out a way to make the loads go quicker. So I went back to the washing machine, got down to eye level with the front panel and started looking closely at every button, knob and nook and cranny on it. The timer knob seemed straighforward. The soap/bleach tray seemed regular too. But hello, hello!! What did we have here. A ‘Timesaver’ button!! Where this thingy had been hiding all these weeks, I had no idea. I was sooo excited that I wanted to yell. I also wanted to bash my head(badly!) against the wall for not having seen it earlier.

Calming the trumpets and chorus of angels singing hallelujah in my head, I filled in the machine yet one more time and set it to a 40 min Coloreds non-fast wash. I could hardly wait to find out if this was the magic button. After an impatient 40 mins I came running and once again, as the angels sang, there was my wash, done in the time it said it would be done.

Needless to say, we are now free of dirtly laundry, until tonight at least. Ahhh, the joy of having a machine that does what it says it does in the time it says it does it in!!