Casting aspersions about woman and machinery will get some of you into trouble. Just so you know.

The problem some of you guys might be encountering is that you didn't read the instructions on the given machine. For years I used my washer the way Gnu described - I turned on the water, put the soap in the bottom as it filled, then added the clothes. I had to set the anticipated level and add the right amount of detergent.

A few years ago that washer was dead on it's feet. I called Sears to have a serviceman come fix it. They offered to sell me an annual service plan for $259. That would cover the entire repair, but if the machine wasn't repairable (if the estimate was over $500), the repair guy would pronounce it dead and they would give me a $500 credit toward a new machine. I'm pretty good at the math and I figured the machine was dead, so I'd bought it 8 years earlier. The fact that they would sell such a plan was staggering, so I jumped on it.

The machine was pronounced dead and they did offer the $500 credit. Later that week I found a $900 high-end machine on sale and had to pay the $100 difference between the credit and the sales price. That was $359 well spent.

This machine is energy star and the instructions are different, so I don't put the soap in the same way. Now I fill the washer with laundry, I add the baking soda (helps the detergent get the clothes cleaner), any dry bleach, and the liquid soap all into a little slot at the top of the machine. I don't tell it what amount of water, it senses the level of the laundry. I do tell it to wash on cold most of the year, our tap water temperature is fine for laundry purposes. I can set this puppy so that it delays running for up to 8 hours so if I set it at bedtime it can run at 4 in the morning when we're not threatened with brown outs during hot weather, etc. It sounds like a rocketship getting ready to launch when it spins, but it spins so dry that if I use the dryer it doesn't take long. I mostly hang it out on the line in the summer.

I taught my kids how to use the old washer, and they know how to use the new washer. My daughter does a lot of sewing so got the hang of the washer early - you don't want to create something then destroy it when laundering. My son has been away at college for the last two years, where he probably throws it all in together - his boxers are various colored prints, his socks are black, and he mostly wears jeans and black t-shirts and undershirts.

SRS