Don't break my washing machine!

“When you go home, you have to write a story about my washing machine,” my mother-in-law said, after Mr. Fluffster asked if he should call the police to mediate the dispute between me and his mother. “Send it to me because I have to approve it first.” Which I did.

I love my mother-in-law dearly, but occasionally we butt heads over household matters. We’re both strong-willed; we each like to get our own way.

The washing machine incident happened on one of our last days in Toronto. Mr. Fluffster and I had been visiting with her every day for nearly two weeks. We’d already done two loads of laundry in her washing machine (pictured above) during two earlier visits. Both times, I put the laundry in, but my mother-in-law took charge of actually starting the machine.

Having watched her start it twice before, I insisted on doing it myself this time around. Under her watchful eye, I set it for a normal load and warm temperature, checked the time showing on the panel (58 minutes), and walked away.

More than an hour later, it was still running. The panel showed 16 minutes left, which couldn’t be right, but then chocolate or wine or something else tempted me away.

A half hour later, we both went to look at the still-running machine. This time, the panel showed 9 minutes. Odd. It had now been long enough to wash three loads, so my mother-in-law pushed the Start/Pause button, then turned off the power. I pulled on the door repeatedly. It wouldn’t budge. “Don’t break my machine!” my mother-in-law said. “Just wait.” We waited. The door wouldn’t open. I wanted to pull harder, but she objected. We turned the power back on again. It still wouldn’t open.

After some heated discussion, we set the washing machine for an additional short cycle, Drain + Spin, for 10 minutes, hoping that the door would unlock itself at the end of that. 

My mother-in-law said her machine had never done anything like this before. My heart sank as I considered the possibility I might be held responsible for repairing or replacing it. I also thought about getting through the next few days without clean socks or underwear.

At the three-minute mark, I headed straight for the machine to watch the final countdown. My mother-in-law did likewise. I won the race. At the end of three tense minutes, the door still wouldn’t open.

We debated about what to do. After taking a closer look, my mother-in-law realized that a shirt sleeve was stuck in the door. It was she, not I, who finally pulled hard enough to open the door.

Yes, it was indeed my fault. I hadn’t pushed the clothes in far enough when stuffing them into the machine. In my self-defence, I’ve never come across this problem before. The machines in our laundry room at home have never held our clothes hostage.

My mother-in-law then remembered that this had indeed happened to her once before, but she’d forgotten about it until then.

We couldn’t open the door because of the trapped sleeve, but why the wash cycle kept going remains a mystery.

Throughout this entire episode, Mr. Fluffster sat quietly on the couch, gazing out the window.