Just over two years ago I moved house. The kitchen was already fitted, there was a utility room, but there was only space for one washing machine, no dishwasher, no tumble dryer.
I could have got the builders in to make changes but instead I decided upon a technological solution and bought a combined washer-dryer. Two functions in one machine. Fantastic idea.
It just so happened that, at the same time as I was making these decisions, my sister moved in to live with myself and Beth so we were now a 3 adult family.
I admit it. I totally underestimated how much extra washing and drying an adult with Williams Syndrome could generate and she’s not even trying!!
Now, not only did I have a combined washer-dryer machine which meant I had to wait for each load to dry before I could begin a new load of washing but, we more than doubled the number of washes needed. We were washing clothes on a daily basis…
This would have had an impact, but, to make things worse, the tumble dryer function didn’t work as well as a stand alone dryer did. As a result my clothes came out dry but intensely creased.
Even if I stopped the drying process early and took slightly damp clothes out of the drying cycle, the creases were almost impossible to remove with a normal steam iron.
Now a task that I had often enjoyed, ironing clothes while watching TV, became a source of intense frustration and something that took longer and longer to complete.
Today I finally bit-the-bullet and bought a separate, stand alone tumble dryer. No, I don’t have room to put it anywhere so I got creative. I stacked it on top of the washing machine. The man in the shop said not to but I was desperate!
So far so good. No tumbling Tower of Babel and clothes that emerge with minimal creasing that can be hung or just lightly ironed.
Why did I wait two years for this?!