Utterly boring blog about washing machines

We were not impressed – our washing machine, that we’ve had for 12 years or more, and that has faithfully followed us from Sydney to Adelaide to Brisbane, died quietly the other night.   One day it was working happily, the next day it was deceased, moribund, a heap of spent machinery in the corner of the laundry.

Nor were we impressed by the $1,000 plus that we had to shell out for a replacement, but – we are delighted with the outcome.

Sorry, couldn't find a photo

Aussies love their top-loaders.   One can buy the ‘sophisticated European’ front-loaders, but who would bother, apart from the glitterati, when you live in a country where the laundry is always a separate room in the house with plenty of space to access the top?

We’ve been top-loader fans ever since we emigrated – and don’t tell us they’re less economical, or that they’re rougher on clothes, because those arguments are furphies which we’ll happily demolish elsewhere – but we hadn’t realised how technology had advanced over the past 10 years.

There’s no ‘agitator’ any more (or ‘paddle’ or ‘spindle’, call it what you will) – nothing in the middle of the drum except oodles of space in which to throw the laundry.

So that blanket, which used to have to be carefully wound around the post, and which usually managed to tie itself tightly in a knot so that getting it out was a nightmare, was a doddle.   Toss it in, turn the thing on and then take it out 30 minutes later, no creases, no fuss, no struggle, and throw it on the Hills (Hoist – nah, you won’t understand, but Bilby will;  although we don’t actually have one here 🙂 ).

Does it wash well?   Boadicea is impressed – and let me tell you, she doesn’t impress easily.   Is it quiet?   As a mouse!



Isn’t it amazing what pleases folk when they get old?

Unknown's avatar

Author: Bearsy

A Queensland Bear with attitude

65 thoughts on “Utterly boring blog about washing machines”

  4. In several postings around the world, I had a Dhobi Walla. Absolutely magic! I just used to throw my dhobi (washing) in the corner and twenty four hours later, it was back, both washed and pressed. 🙂

    P.S. In Hong Kong, one was called Ah Lee and the other Chan. In the Middle East, he was called Mohamed.

  6. Reminds me of a lost in space episode many years ago when “Will” placed all the washing in the machine and it all came out full pressed, wrapped in clean plastic and everything with its own coat-hanger 🙂

  12. My goodness, there are machines that wash clothes? What a wonderful invention. I have been in Africa too long.

    Seriously though, in the US, all washing machines were top-loaders and I think they really did live up to the reputation of being wasteful in terms of water and electricity. Big clunky and unsophisticated. It seemed to me that the Yanks were quite happy to settle for the traditional US brands such as GE and Maytag who in turn never bothered developing new models. I imagine that the Asian companies are cutting their lunch by now. Top loaders are certainly a lot easier to deal with. Less far to bend down to retrieve the last sock!

  13. Boa, I trust you read the instructions before you pressed go. Btw, does it go round in the same direction as a northern hemisphere machine? 🙂

  14. Sipu

    My ‘dead’ top-loader was the first on the market to work out how much water was needed – this one is no different. I’m not quite sure how it does it, but the first part of the program takes a couple of seconds for ‘load sensing’. As to wasteful of electricity, one of the things that drives both of us crazy in the UK is how long the front-loaders there take to do a tiny load of washing. 🙂

    Janus

    I most certainly did read the destructions! No idea which way the drum goes – open the lid and it stops..

  15. Top loaders do not tear up collars etc anywhere near so much.
    Sears actually makes a series to run on European electricity, you just order it for the country you want. I had one in the 80’s in the UK I took back with me. Still running 20 years later. No 2 still has it.
    bloody expensive $1000 though! is it made in Australia? Wouldn’t cost that much here.

  16. I had a top-loader in the UK 40 years ago. Fell for the rubbish about front-loaders and regretted ever after.

    The shops here sell front-loaders on the myth that they use less water and cause less damage to clothes. I ask whether they’d take their clothes down to the river and smash them on the stones – which is exactly the action of a front-loader.

    Yes, it is expensive. One can get cheaper models, but they were smaller, lower spin, and ‘brand’ unknown’.

  17. I paid $1000 dollars for mine too, but they are huge, not little by any means. Three settings for different water levels, etc. Mine is a Simpson, owned by electrolux. I don’t know much more about them, I’m not allowed to use it, I just paid for it 😦

  19. I remember the local launderette with great fondness, going there as a young man with a plastic bag full of dirty clothing, inserting a few coins into a gigantic front loader and idly reading a magazine while my washing got done.

    Then I would take it out of the machine and place it into a monster of a dryer, insert some more coins and once again wait, and wait … then take it all out of there, put it all inside the same plastic bag I brought it in and go home 🙂

  20. Bearsy :

    It’s a big bugger – handles 8.5 kgs (about 19 lbs). Max spin 1,000 rpm.

    Oh that we have come to this. Penis envy in our latter years. Remember when we used to brag about the size of our motorbikes and cars. Now it is washing machines. 😦

  22. Sipu, mate – see the last line of my post, and remember that after my recent operation the appendage to which you refer no longer works! 😥
    I know, too much information!

  28. Bravo

    Electric mangle that sprung open if (like me) you didn’t feed the wet washing through properly? My mother bought one when my brother was born.

    My second washing machine was one that had an open gas ring underneath – would never get past “elf n safety” now. Husband #1 put his green corduroy trousers in it, lit the gas and boiled them. He then put the nappies in and boiled those too. The trousers ended up fit for a midget, and the nappies never lost their sludge green colour!

  29. That’s the one, Boa. It was touted as ‘safer’ than the big, old hand mangle because it sprang apart if you stuck your hand in the rollers. It worked, too, when I tested it – on my little brother’s hand, of course 🙂

  31. My brother was too small to experiment on – besides he was a tell-tale and being ten years older than him it was always my fault… 🙂

  32. Do you take your washing down to the river, Val? 🙂

    When one thinks about it, it was a nightmare to keep clothes (and bodies!) clean in former times. When I lived in Lambeth the council still ran bath houses where people could get a hot bath, and it also had a huge laundry where people could take their washing. It was the most amazing place with huge washers, dryers and airing cabinets.

  34. Bearsy:

    At least your machine just conked out. Number one son and daughter in law’s caught fire and could have burned the house down. Fortunately he was on gardening leave between jobs, so was at home when it happened. He managed to phone the local fire brigade (not always that local in the States, but theirs was) who came and stopped any major damage, although they did manage to tread on a load of British confectionery bars that I had sent to him, as he thinks they are better than the American variety.

  35. I have heard of those bath houses, I bet it was a bit stinky at times.

    Not at all. I used them once, I can’t quite remember why. They were basic: hot water, soap and towels, but spotlessly clean. The only smell was disinfectant. I spent a lot of time in St Thomas’s London as a child – it was immaculate. I visited St Bartholomew’s, London, a while back and some other hospitals in England more recently – the Lambeth bath houses could have taught Barts and the other hospitals a thing or two about cleanliness!

  36. valzone :
    I’m still using a wash board
    Excuse me, who’s Donald? Have we been formally introduced Donald?

    Hello Valzone. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Donald, a lovable, intelligent, modest and cute Australian. 🙂

  37. Donald :

    valzone :
    I’m still using a wash board
    Excuse me, who’s Donald? Have we been formally introduced Donald?

    Hello Valzone. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Donald, a lovable, intelligent, modest and cute Australian. :-)

    Have you been her before under another name? 🙂

  38. The subject of ‘mangles’ often comes up when my brother and I are nattering over a beer or two 🙂

    The washing machine and mangle came into the house when we moved into an RAF married quarter. Before that, we had been living with my Nanna, where washday involved the ‘copper,’ (actually, I guess, galvanised iron,) lots of steam and suds in the scullery and lifting things out of the boiling water with wooden tongs for rinsing in the stone, (really,) sink. Great amusement for a small boy, but don’t even think of mentioning it to the safety elves.

  40. Are Hills Hoists still going? I used to Work for them in the 60s when the head office was based in East Sheen, South London. They had warehouses in Fulham and the stuff used to arrive from Oz to the old graving docks in Cardiff, red and yellow used to be the corporate colours I believe.
    On another note, ‘front loaders’ is also a term that applies to ladies bra’s so you may get a few strange reposnses.

  42. Donald :

    I’m still here under an other name, Indoles, but my real name is Donald :-)

    A change is as good as rest. Been there done that. 🙂

  44. Bravo

    I moved into an old cottage once that had a ‘copper’, and it really was copper. It was in the kitchen supported by a built in brick wall – it was heated by a fire that one had to light underneath. I never used it! Incidentally, the kitchen sink was served by a mains (cold) tap and a pump from the well in the garden.

    OMG

    Hills hoists are still used here. We don’t have one – they take up far too much space. I shall bear in mind your caveat!

  49. ‘Allow me to introduce myself, I am Donald, a lovable, intelligent, modest and cute Australian’

    Sorry – does not compute – no such beast!

    Hello, I’m Tim, a twisted Welshman, who hankers after the 60’s.

  52. Excuse me, who’s Donald? Have we been formally introduced Donald? ;-)

    Looks like you pulled again, Val! 🙂

  54. Hello Bearsy and Boadicea, proud owners of a new washer: I just replaced mine with a big ‘un. LGWT5001CW, $503 brand new at the Sears “Scratch and Dent” outlet, so it has a small dent on the left side, it’s a washing machine not a new motorbike. As you say, no agitator and this one has a CLEAR lid so you can stand and watch the big’s mix with the smalls (better than Fox News IMHO).
    My one experience with a front loader was during a visit to the UK, I loaded the thing with dirty togs an hour or so prior to packing to depart to the airport.
    With a motion similar to an asthmatic concrete mixer, it hissed, rolled a few times clockwise and stopped, Ten minutes later it did the same thing anticlockwise. Two hours later it was still rocking and rolling. I took my wet clothes out, stuffed them in my suitcase – and ran.

  55. When I was at Sea with Union SS Co of NZ all the ships had Pallo washing machines, I think they were made in NZ. Just an enameled tub on four legs with a vertical agitator and a wringer, can’t remember if the ringer was electric or handronic. They certainly got things clean and if you forgot your stuff turned it into cotton waste.. Mind you a Hoover twin tub could do that.
    Our current washing machine is a Hoover front loader, great, cost £300 ish from Costco in Reading. The previous machine was Blomberg we had it 10 years before it died.

    Gosh this is an interesting topic.

    When I was an apprentice at sea (actually I was a cadet because I hadn’t signed indentures, just signed on voyage to voyage) we didn’t have a washing machine……or a washboard. So you just washed everything by hand in a big sink in the washroom. Drying was outside in good weather or in wet weather on a rail which ran round the fiddley bulkhead. Sometimes you were allowed to boil stuff in a galvanised bucket on the galley stove, but that was reserved for working gear. The engineers had their own arcane arrangement which involved a old 40 gallon oil drum and a steam hose from the donkey boiler.

    I remember scrubbing wrangler jeans on No 4 hatch with a deck scrubber to get them the right colour and consistency. Faded jeans, blue shirt, daks sports jacket, polished brown loafers…that was the rig for chatting up girls at the mission and we were luckier than you might think.

  56. I hate front loaders with a passion. Expensive, fiddly things and an absolute b*ugger to operate. Many, many moons ago I had a girfriend who used to wear them constantly and it was a nightmare. Give me normal ones with the little hooks on the backstrap every time.

    OZ

  57. ‘and this one has a CLEAR lid so you can stand and watch the big’s mix with the smalls (better than Fox News IMHO).’

    That’s the bloody truth!
    but then a washing machine is far more entertaining than anything shown on American TV!
    I hate front loaders too, I also hate them in kitchens, that smell of detergent and the continual asthmatic wheezing for HOURS!

  59. There was a scene in ‘Madmen’, the US TV series where the wife of the character Don Draper has a bit of a ‘Hotpoint moment’ when she has a fantasy about a salesmen while leaning into the machine while it goes into a jiggly sort of spin mode. Is that common with top loaders? Only asking as we may have to replace our old twin tub soon and I do like MrsOMG to get the most out of her appliences.

  61. Donald, how nice to see you after all this time.

    We have a front loader – I just haven’t seen alternative around in the UK

  63. Front-loaders always provided entertainment for our dog. He used to sit in front of it mesmerised as the stuff went round. Top-loaders don’t provide such amusement.

Add your Comment