Historically much maligned for their domestic idleness, men have come a long way in recent years. Comfortable in the kitchen, happy to do the vacuuming and occasionally enthusiastic about childcare, the age of equality is very much here. Just don’t mention the laundry. It remains a baffling world where fancy, shiny, modern washing machines are viewed as Cyclopean nemeses, brooding away in the corner, ready to punish the simplest label-reading error or colour mix-up.
Here are seven very good reasons why doing the washing is anathema to the male of the species:
1. Men are confused that it has to happen at all, and with such astonishing regularity. Some would quite happily revert back to Victorian times when poor children were sewn into their clothes at the start of winter and then unstitched come the warmer months. Men will happily recycle a garment from the “floordrobe” – pick it up, dust it down, give it a cursory sniff and put it right back on. Who cares if it’s Thursday and they’ve been wearing it since Monday?
2. Powder, tablets, balls, gels – the list of things you can put in a washing machine has seemingly grown exponentially in recent years. It used to be simple – you put the powder in the drawer and that was it. Now some things go in the drawer, some go in the drum and some go in a bag in the drum – it’s become a very, very confusing world. Men would rather not risk putting the wrong thing in the wrong place.
3. Can he put his bath towel in with his pants? Can he wash that white merino wool sweater with his new red socks? Can he chuck his jeans in with his chinos? Constructing the ideal load is a minefield and best left to the experts. Especially after what happened to her favourite white top the last time he tried to be helpful. . .
4. Why are clothing labels full of symbols akin to those found on the walls of Egyptian tombs? A man shouldn’t need a copy of the Rosetta stone to decipher the care label on his favourite T-shirt. All those triangles, squares and circles resemble some kind of devilish cypher that war-time codebreakers would struggle to crack.
5. And if the clothes labels are bad, what about the dials on the machine? All those symbols, programmes AND temperatures – they are just a recipe for disaster. What’s wrong with a big button that just says “wash clothes”?
6. Men famously struggle with having a thorough look for something. A so-called “man look” involves confidently claiming to have looked everywhere for the house keys with no success.
Her: “Have you checked the top drawer in the hall?”
Him: “Yes, I had a look and they weren’t there.”
[Two minutes later]
Her: “Here they are.”
Him: “Where were they?”
Her: “In the top drawer in the hall. You must have had a man look.”
What does this have to do with washing? Well, there are all those pockets to go through and a man knows that he will inevitably fail to remove a golf ball that will proceed to rattle around the washing machine drum for half an hour or a tissue that will deconstruct itself all over a favourite jumper. Oh, and has anyone seen the cat?
7. Finally, doing the washing invariably leads to another baffling exercise: ironing. And that is not a path down which any man wishes to voluntarily tread . . .
Hello 7 Reasons readers, it’s Marc here, and I have news! Now you might find it hard to contain your excitement when you read this, but I’ve bought a new laundry basket! Now, I have to admit that this is something I wouldn’t usually share with 7 Reasons readers, but the purchase of the laundry basket (pictured below this paragraph) set in motion a chain of events that led me to realise that life would be immeasurably improved for people that carried a laundry basket around with them at all times. Here’s why.
Yes, it's a laundry basket!
1. Wear It As A Hat. “I’m not sure I’ve thought this purchase through,” I found myself saying as I was leaving my local laundry basket emporium, “I’m going to be lumbered with this thing for the evening now”. “Well, if it rains, you can always wear it as a hat,” said the woman at the checkout, helpfully. She’s right, I thought as I strolled out of the store. Throughout human history, the fundaments of our very existence have been food, reproduction (of which more later) and shelter. Now you can’t eat your laundry basket, and you can’t mate with it (and certainly not in the car park), but if you’ve a laundry basket with you, much in the manner of a snail with its shell, you are assured of shelter in all circumstances. You can wear it as a hat in moderate weather, and in extremis you can climb inside and fasten the lid. With your laundry basket you will be inured from the effects of wind, rain, sun, snow, hail; in fact, most of the elements except for lead.
2. Financial Gain. Arriving at the supermarket (forward planning is really not my thing), I picked up a shopping basket and, with a basket in each hand now, I set off to gather my goods. As I walked round the store, I soon found that I was being followed by a security guard who became quite agitated when I entered the spirits aisle. Then I realised something. A laundry basket would be a great thing to fill with goods, but is too conspicuous by half to be used for the purpose of theft. Then, I had an idea: For six months, I could take my laundry basket wherever I went. Everyone would notice this so in very little time, the entire city would come to know me as Laundry Basket Man: the harmless eccentric that carries with him, as his constant companion, his empty laundry basket. And then, once this reputation had been earned, I could begin to shoplift with it. After six months carrying an empty laundry basket around, who would suspect me? Or you?
3. It Makes People Feel Good. Having devised a fiscal plan for my future, I arrived at the checkout. As I queued, the couple in front of me kept looking back, then whispering between themselves and giggling. They paid for their goods and left, and then it was my turn. As I put the laundry basket down, the girl at the checkout glared at it as if I’d just placed a leprechaun in front of her, or a turquoise baboon. Realising that this was something that she had not been expecting to face and that I had taken her somewhere out of her comfort zone, I knew that I needed to say something, preferably something witty, to diffuse the situation. I thought hard while the girl continued to stare at the basket. After several seconds, the silence was weighing heavy and the situation was becoming uncomfortable, I needed to say something – anything – as soon as possible. What to say? What to say? Ah, got it! “I’ve brought my laundry basket out with me,” I stated, matter-of-factly. The girl stopped glaring at the laundry basket and, with an expression of pure contempt, turned to glare at me. As I paid for my goods and sloped out of the supermarket, I realised something. I realised that many insecure people feel better about their own life when they have someone to look down on (this is why bullying happens) and, that if you were to carry a laundry basket about, you’d be performing a valuable public service. You’d be making people feel good about themselves.
4. It’s Distracting. It was half past six. As I strode along the pavement past roads full of gridlocked traffic, I could sense that everyone, in every car, bus and van, was staring at the laundry basket. I realised that this could be a useful thing. Have you ever had a spot? Have you ever had a bad hair day? Perhaps you have a spot so well established that it’s having a bad hair day of its own? Well, worry no more. When you carry a laundry basket around, no one will notice. You’ll never need to do your hair again or iron your trousers – you’ll even be able to wear purple – as all eyes will be on the basket.
5. It’s A Talking Point. I arrived at the pub*. Taking a seat at the bar, I placed my laundry basket down beside me. Now you might think that a laundry basket at a bar would be a similar thing to the elephant in the room, but you’d be wrong. The elephant was larger, greyer and no one was talking about him. He seemed a bit piqued. The laundry basket, however, was on everyone’s lips. If you want to hear references to Ali Baba, snake charming, washing machines, midget-smuggling, The Wicker Man etcetera, etcetera, et bloody cetera, carry a laundry basket with you. There’s never an uncomfortable silence when you have a laundry basket. Or any silence.
6. Reproduction. Something else occurred to me while I was in the pub: I’m married, but I know that for single people, meeting prospective partners is difficult. As the father of a small child though, I know how to break the ice and meet people and, should anyone have a penchant for crazed women over the age of forty-seven, I would advise that they carry a small baby around with them. They will meet absolutely everyone’s batty aunt (whether they want to or not), and sometimes a whole mob of them. But perhaps your tastes are different? You might want to meet younger people of the opposite sex? People of the same sex? Perhaps you’re a Justin Bieber fan who wants to meet people of indeterminate sex? When you carry a laundry basket, you’ll get to meet – and talk to – absolutely bloody everyone, so your chances of finding a partner are significantly increased. Your chances of murdering the ninety-fourth person that asks if they can see your snake are quite high too, but for the patient and tolerant, a laundry basket is a shortcut to sexual success.
7. Keep Track. Finally, after as many conversations about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as any man could bear, I headed home to surprise my wife with the laundry basket**. Having negotiated the front door I strode into the house, stepped into the living room, placed my surprise on the floor and, with a quiver of excitement in my voice announced, “Look darling! I’ve bought…a laundry basket.” “I know,” she replied. “How?” I enquired, disbelievingly. “I’ve had texts”. She showed me her phone. She certainly had received texts. Texts that said: “I’ve just seen your husband walking down the street with a laundry basket”. Texts that said: “Ooh, I like your new laundry basket.” Texts that said: “Just seen Marc in the pub with a laundry basket”. It turns out that all of York was abuzz with talk of the laundry basket. So, if you’re a bit forgetful or prone to getting lost, carrying a laundry basket will ensure that your other half will receive a detailed up to the minute report of your every movement from her network of spies friends. You’ll also: have a permanent shelter; be better off financially; bring joy to others; never have to worry about your appearance; never be lost for conversation, and – if single – you’ll be more sexually successful. The next time you go out, don’t forget your laundry basket.
The IKEA Plastis is amazing. It’s truly a thing of wonder. Here are seven reasons that it’s the ultimate washing-up brush.
1. It Creates Envy. The IKEA Plastis washing-up brush is capable of provoking great envy. I first saw one in a friend’s kitchen four years ago and, ignoring all of the more expensive and conventionally desirable objects that surrounded it (almost the entire Le Creuset range of pots and pans, a very swanky digital radio, a fully-tiled kitchen floor), I made a beeline straight for it. “This is amazing!”, I exclaimed, as I picked it up, wide-eyed, to examine it. “It’s a washing-up brush”, my friend replied, helpfully. “Yes, I can see that”, I said, “but it’s got a sucker on the bottom. It’s ingenious*.” And that was it. I had fallen in love with the simplicity and brilliance of the design. I wanted that washing-up brush more than I want a cat that can talk or the ability to levitate (which I would use mostly to surprise people in first-floor rooms). I had to have one.
2. It Creates Anticipation. “It’s from IKEA”, my friend said. “What! NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” was my rational and measured response during which I adopted a posture worthy of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but in a well-appointed Bolton kitchen. This may seem like an overreaction to the prospect of purchasing something from IKEA, but it really isn’t. Had the Plastis been available solely from the moon it would have been easier to get hold of. I live in the centre of a city. Because of this I choose not to own a car. This is because I live in the bit that most people drive to and I have no desire to visit the suburbs/industrial estates/retail parks/Frankie and Benny’s so I don’t need one. Public transport is also not a practical option when it comes to visiting our local IKEA and the Plastis isn’t available to order online (I checked. Weekly), so I had to wait four years until we required a sufficient quantity of shelving, lampshades, sideboards and other stuff in order to justify renting a car to get the Plastis. During that time I tried not to think of the brush every day**, but I thought about it a lot. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and, in the years that the brush was absent from my life, I grew very fond of it indeed. Perhaps too fond.
I stopped short of getting a tattoo of the Plastis.
3. It Makes Grown Men Jump For Joy. “There it is! There it is!” I exclaimed breathlessly to my wife while pointing to a display on the other side of a very large room in IKEA, before abandoning her and hurrying toward the stand of brushes. And there it was. Or, more excitingly, they were. There were loads of them, in several colours, standing upright in serried ranks on their suckers. There was an army of them. This is what it must be like to be The Queen during the trooping of the colour, I thought. After four, long years, I was finally about to get hold of a Plastis!. Obviously, I studied them all very carefully before selecting one and, while my wife was away playing with wardrobes, tape measures and shelving, I made my important decision. Though it wasn’t a very difficult one because…
4. The Plastis Comes In Red. This is important. As one of the rules of our kitchen (immediately after the rule that every time I paint the ceiling, something else will spring a leak and ruin it again) is that nothing goes in there unless it’s red. We have red pots, red pans, red blenders, red mug-stands, red radios, red everything. Josef Stalin and Ken Livingstone would get into our kitchen: Winston Churchill and Joseph McCarthy would not. Unless they’re any good at laying floor tiles (red), in which case, they’d be very welcome.
5. It’s Great Value. The IKEA Plastis is fantastic value priced, as it is, at £1.11. Not only does this mean that you can buy joy and fulfilment for less than the price of a cup of coffee, but – with its preponderance of 1s – should you wish to print this page out, it will be cheaper to do so as the number 1 uses less ink than any other number. Also, should you be near a superstitious type at this moment, the three ones will be causing them to say “Nelson!” and dance around, meaning that you get free entertainment too. Obviously, in our case, the fantastic value was slightly offset by having to buy a sideboard and rent a car to get one, but it’s still better value than paying council tax, which costs many times more and doesn’t make anyone happy.
6. It’s Even Better Value For Dishwasher-Owners. Because, as the people at IKEA will tell you, the Plastis is dishwasher-safe. Which means that you can wash your washing-up brush inside the dishwasher, which is great, because otherwise, if we didn’t have a dishwasher, we’d have to buy another washing-up brush to wash our washing-up brush with. So for dishwasher-owners, the cost of washing-up brush ownership is halved.***
7. It’s Got A Sucker. Obviously the best bit about the Plastis is the sucker, and since we got ours home I’ve been experimenting with it. I’ve stood it up on the draining board, I’ve stuck it to the wall, I’ve affixed it to the (red) biscuit tin and, best of all, I’ve stuck it to my forehead and chased the cat around the house pretending to be an alien (consequently, for the past two days I’ve had a large purple circle in the centre of my forehead which doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon). There is literally nothing that can’t be improved by sticking a Plastis to it. Even people. The Plastis is awesome and one day, who knows, I might even use it to wash something up.
*I promise you, our conversations are usually far more interesting than this.
**Because that would be weird.
***Yes, I did use this argument in IKEA to justify purchasing the Plastis to my wife, who responded by using a technique that she has developed during our marriage called Smile & Nod.
1. Odd socks. Wearing odd socks is not really the done thing. It looks strange and makes people avoid you. The problem is that it’s really not your fault. If the washing machine understood that eating a sock is not part of the deal when you use the machine, then you could walk around like a normal person. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
2. Communication Destroyer. They are loud and clanky bits of machinery are washing machines, so much so that you may struggle to hear the wife when she asks, ‘Have you seen the cat?’
3. Vision Depletor. It doesn’t take much, just a dodgy washing machine door and too much soap powder. Before you know it, the suds have built up to uncontainable levels, pushed the door open and filled the room with white floaty stuff. As fun as it is to play around in, it won’t be long before you’ve collided with the blender.
4. Back Injury Hazard. The majority of duvets are light. In weight I mean, not colour. Though some are light in weight and colour – which is to be applauded I suppose. But when you’ve stopped applauding, let’s get back to my point. Duvets are light. They can be tossed into the machine and one does not need to adhere to correct tossing procedures. However, upon washing machine cycle completion, something has happened. The once light duvet, is now heavy. Not only is it wet, it has also eaten everything else in the machine. To remove said duvet, one should adhere to heavy object lifting protocol. But does one? No one does not. Silliness.
5. DIY Fail. I am convinced the traditional washing machine is made out of parts of a space-shuttle. How else can you explain it’s complete disregard for gravity? When I switch my washing machine on, I expect it to stay next to the sink, not head off down the kitchen towards the oven. Nor do I expect it to chip away at the tiling on the way.
6. Administration Fail. I have a filing system for receipts. It’s called the back pocket of my jeans. Usually I find these much easier to read when they are dry. Not when they have been reduced to little bits of paper and apparently superglued to every other item of clothing I have just pulled from the machine.
7. Not Every Day Is Valentine’s Day. Presenting your girlfriend/wife with pink lingerie may be seen as a romantic gesture one day a year, but it gets a bit repetitive if it happens everytime you use the washing machine. The secret is to make sure there is no red sock in with the whites. Apparently.
