By Joyce Middlebrooke
Special to the Herald

I’m a person who enjoys passing on useful information. In my recent foray into an appliance store I found a must have device for home laundering.
This marvelous unit has not one, but two washing machines! And for your hard-earned money’s worth, they give you a total of 47 different buttons. I inspected the machine, and noted that the top unit is made for the small loads; you know, the time you just want to wash underwear or one pair of pants without feeling like a water-waster; or maybe the two guest towels or one set of double sheets from Aunt Miriam’s visit. This small upper machine offers an array of 15 buttons. I’d guess that it would take me, oh, thirty minutes to figure out how to wash a load. And that’s just on the upper unit.
As for the larger machine, there is an abundance of 32 buttons! So you could wash Aunt Miriam’s sheets and towels together. But do you choose “whites” or “bedding”? “Sanitizing” or one of the other 11 choices on one side and 20 on the other? Doing quick math, there are about 3,456 combinations of buttons, plus a “child lock” choice! Oh, and finally, you can’t forget to press the most important button of all: the “start” button. Programming the larger machine would take, oh, an hour?
I did some Google “research” and found that in 2016, some of the small capacity units actually exploded, sending machine parts, and sometimes the lid, into space. The manufacturer wisely warned: “In rare cases, affected units may experience abnormal vibrations that could pose a risk of personal injury or property damage when washing bedding, bulky, or water-resistant items.”
I’ve gained new appreciation for my old four-knob washer that miraculously turns out clean laundry every time. If there were an appliance god, I would be lighting a candle for her.

Joyce Middlebrooke is a resident who moved to Benicia from the Sierra Foothills in 2016.

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