The Gadget Agenda: Why I’m banned from the washing machine and my wife can’t touch the dishwasher
I can control half my house by shouting at Google, but put me in front of a washing machine and I’m completely lost. Fortunately, my wife feels much the same about the dishwasher, so we’ve reached an arrangement.
There’s a machine in my house, tucked away by a fridge in the utility room, that I completely don't understand. I know what it does, because it’s a washing machine, and I know my wife has to fill it with clothes from the laundry basket and then a few days later they appear in our bedroom ready to be put away.
I’m by no means a technophobe. I pay for goods in shops by tapping my ring against a card machine and most things in my house can be switched on or off by bellowing “Okay Google". But I simply cannot get my head around the washing machine.
There’s something about the fact you have to put powder in somewhere and then there are all the cycles, which are inexplicably linked to letters and controlled by old-fashioned knobs.
And there’s a series of temperatures. Some of these will ruin your clothes and some of these will turn them pink. One temperature is apparently quite safe to use but I have absolutely no idea which one that is.
And there's load capacity. If I overload it, the appliance will catch fire and we'll all be living in a Travelodge for a few months. The washing machine frightens me and I never want to touch it.
In the kitchen we have a dishwasher. That's a machine I know very well. It has buttons with clear pictures and a digital display. I can simply tell it which shelves I've loaded and with what, how long I'd like it to run for, and whether I’m feeling poor enough to risk the eco setting.
I pop in a tablet, close the door, and forget about it until it beeps at me. I love my dishwasher and if Mrs B touches it, she's in big trouble. Quite frankly, she always makes a dog’s dinner of loading it.
I’m told this is a man thing. I gather the obsession with which types of crockery sit within which slots and which way the various varieties of cutlery must face is something unique to men. Women simply don’t care.
Everything in my dishwasher has a place, and if I open it and find something in the wrong place it makes me itch. And I have to move it immediately.
Funnily enough, Her Ladyship doesn’t like the dishwasher. It scares her in the way the washing machine scares me. I remember being away for a few days and she rang in a panic because the series of button controls - which couldn't be more self-explanatory - were making her so angry she had begun to scare the dog.
“You literally just have to press the button on the right, twice” I explained over the phone, because I'd set everything up for her before I left.
“I did. And that didn’t work” she barked back. “Did you put the bowls at the front?” I asked suspiciously. “Er... I forgot about that, is that why it won’t turn on?” She replied, sheepishly.
I pretended that was the problem and suggested she waited until I got back, and I would sort it. It was in such a mess by the time I returned it took me nearly half an hour to rearrange everything.
Wine glasses weren’t in the wine-glass holder, the cutlery holder was in the wrong way round and several knives and forks were the wrong way up. And she had put a pan on the top shelf. Can you believe that?
Goodness knows what she’d done with the buttons at the top. It took several minutes to get it back onto the right programme setting.
So we've made a pact. I am excused from using the washing machine and she is banned from touching the dishwasher. It's restored matrimonial harmony to our household and the dog now leads a much happier, calmer, quieter life.
The only problem is, she goes away for work occasionally. And if I ever need my favourite pair of jeans washing in a hurry and she’s not there to operate the washing machine I'll be snookered.
Unless they’ll fit in the dishwasher... Now, there’s a thought.