The Angel in the House

A new laundry animal has entered my life. It's sold under various names, but the version I bought is called the Wonderwash. It's been in my head to do so for a long time, a through-line amidst my never-ending laundry dissatisfaction ever since I saw the infomercial, years ago now, and I finally decided to get one. As someone with enormously strong feelings about laundry, well...this doesn't escape either.

I'm sorrry to say it doesn't cure every laundry ill. I'm still waitin for the big front loaders of my dreams which will spirit me away to a beautiful life in fluffy mules and pegnoir sets to do that.

It's pretty handy for what it does, it's just...you know, another gadget in the end. Not *the* gadget. Here it is crowding absoluely everthing off my bathroom counter. A tub with a screw-on lid with a hand-crank, with the drainage tube in place.

It's a fairly clever, although not completely realized design. You put the laundry in, with not much water/soap, the air expansion from even a little heat in the water helps force the dirt out/through the fabric as you spin the tub. You loosen the clever pressure-controlling lid, and drain the water out the bottom (it's kinda cool to see physics in action and the water speed up as you loosen the top). Repeat with plain water to rinse.

Problems? You need room to do this, really. The Wonderwash is popular in crowded Asian cities and in campers, but it's really best for outdoors where the water has room to drip and spray. And speaking of centrifugal force...it's very hard not wish/wonder why this thing can be designed to use its force for spinning dry. Retrofitted in some way. If the drainage tube weren't blocked by the supports, you could spin it with the tube in, but as it is...dripping laundry.

I think it's gonna be great for small loads of delicates and pre-soaking things. I haven't yet given it a whirl for something like super-dirty socks in need of sanitizing and I'm not sure I would. But it pre-soaked a sheet really well and did a good job with some stockings. And I do like that it saves water, and that you don't need to plug anything in. But why do I feel that I just spent $45 in the wrong direction? Yet another thing I'll be selling at a garage sale someday should I be lucky enough to have one?

You should see what my laundry room is going to look like some day. It will be so beautiful... I just don't wanna be all Miss Havisham about this thing that will never happen. Maybe I can get front-loaders on the Dem ticket for 2008.