Alexander's

As an avid reader of my blog you already know that I got married recently.[^1]

Please Alex make sure we have a washing machine in our new flat. I'm not sure my hands could take washing our clothes per hand.

Good thing we still had a spare washing machine in Kärnten that just needed a tiny bit of work. So next time I went home my father and I cracked the darn thing open, just to find out that the main ball bearing had disintegrated. A piece had broken off and most of the balls were missing. Not only is such a specialized ball bearing quite expensive, we were also missing the tools to remove the remains of the old one in the first place.

So I had to buy a new washing machine.

What sounded like an easy task turned out to be pure horror. Every washing machine I looked at had the same feature set and all the programs I'd ever use. They were all super energy efficient, silent, intelligent and -- best of all -- they would get my clothes clean.

So I decided to buy a special magazine with tests and comparisons of washing machines -- great idea -- or so I thought until I checked the test results:

Great for cleaning clothes, but the purging could be better.

For basically every machine in the test.

So why is one machine 300 Euro and one that is just as good costs 1200 Euro?

I sit in a well air conditioned room in front of a computer all day long. Unless I spill food on my necktie my clothes don't get dirty at all.[^2] Even a crappy washing machine would probably be more than enough for me.

In the end I did exactly what companies want me to do. I got a middle priced machine, since the cheap ones have to be crappy and inferior somehow.

I now use exactly two programs and my clothes get clean.

I'm satisfied, but I really can't stop wondering how cool a machine for twice the price would have been.

[^1]: Recently as in almost a year ago - when this blogpost was originally written [^2]: Ok they get dirty if I run through a field or climb a tree to recover my airplanes, but that's not the point here