I am currently in awe of a purchase we made recently, which took a long long time to occur. It’s an item that always seemed a bit haughty to me; it’s The Clothes Dryer. In the years before new neural pathways grew and I realised what a dryer would do for my time management, I would scowl upon seeing one tossing things about on a day that the sky was being blasted with sunshine. Like, what is wrong with hanging clothes outside on a clothes line, I would think. I knew the dryer made your clothes feel soft, but it was an unnecessary luxury for people who cared not for the environment and were too lazy to peg their clothing outdoors. Now, as I type these words I am serenaded by the sweet sweet sounds of The Simpsons spinning drum; its third load today. I’m 30, and I have come to my senses.

The exact foundation of my very stern frown toward the dryer is easy to pinpoint and that location is definitely within the realms of my childhood. Our clothes line was always full and still to this day I have never seen either of my parents put a load of washing on and stick it straight in the dryer upon completion. The dryer was always an extreme last resort; used when washing had weathered the start of rain or a late winter afternoon and needed a few minutes of heat to get the damp out. It was expensive to run and “bad for the environment.” Without looking any further into this, it was my contra-dryer theory for many years.

Recently, however, I became a mother of two, and I am all about convenience now. Any parent knows that laundry is a huge part of, um, life, when you have children, because of how feral kids can be. They play in sand, dirt, mud. They pee themselves. They poo themselves. They vomit on themselves, and you. They drop food on everything and they dribble, just to name a few of their strengths. So when we increased our household to four people, our washing naturally increased too. We needed a drying mechanism for the coming winter…and holy cow. How my life has changed since it’s arrival. Now, I cannot believe how many hundreds of hours I can look back upon, having spent WASTING my PRECIOUS time HANGING WASHING OUTSIDE, and bringing it in. No. Those days are gone, my friend, gone gone gone.

Never again will I spend my winter minutes hanging bits and pieces outside in the snippets of sunshine, only to dash back at the onset of rain. Never again will I hang stuff outside and leave it out there for days and days due to recurrent rain and intermittent sunshine. My washing basket will never again overflow due to weeks of rain. Rain, rain, rain. Causing havoc for clothes washing slaves everywhere. But now, my life is complete. Who knew you could be best friends with a piece of machinery?

Rant over.