It is a crying shame that a 63-year-old man with a college degree can’t figure out how to use a darn washing machine just to starch some sheets! It is, and I am that man.
My wife, Danny, and I have been trying to crisp up the sheets for our bed with a little (or a lot) of starch and have run into multiple problems. First off, we couldn’t find any liquid starch anywhere so we had to resort to the Internet and Amazon who just so happened to also be out of liquid starch. Must be a lot of folks trying to crisp up their sheets. They did have some powdered starch and I placed the order.
I really think it might just be corn starch under a different label, but who knows. That’s what it looks like anyway. This powdered starch has to be mixed with hot water and then added to the washing machine during the rinse cycle. Simple enough.
Nope.
Several months ago our ancient washer had gotten to the point that it needed a spinning boost by hand every now and then, and then shortly all of the time. The problem there is that when you opened the lid to that washer it would not spin. I was able to keep the lid closed enough with one hand while my right arm and hand were inside the tub offering the boost, but it kind of hurt the arm that was doing the boosting to the spinner with that lid pressed against it.
We caved and bought a new washer. While we were caved we decided to go ahead and buy a new dryer as well since the layout of our laundry room/closet/half-bath requires the dryer to be moved out to get the old washer out and the new washer in.
Kill two birds with one stone while both birds are out of that room, I thought, and the dryer was just as old as the washer.
They don’t make just a plain washing machine anymore!
The new fangled ones don’t say wash, and rinse, and spin, etc. They have all sorts of settings and they measure the amount of water based on the size of the load and that kind of stuff, and honestly, I’m just not that worried about the environment and wasting water. Sorry, I’m just not.
I would like to tell the washing machine to fill it to the brim and get ‘er done ‘cause we don’t have all day to sit around trying to wash one load of clothes. Plus if I have a dirty dishtowel that I want to toss in mid-stream I want to toss it in mid-stream, not stop and start all over again. I wash everything together anyway, but don’t judge me for that.
So, Sunday afternoon we were trying to crisp up those bedsheets. We put them in the washer, shut the lid and it threw the Fort Knox lock on and started its little squirt a little water, spin a little spin, squirt a little water, spin a little spin and eventually got enough water squirted in there to wash the sheets and get them ready for that powdered starch dissolved in hot water, that I did not measure precisely on purpose. I figured err on the side of too much and get extra crispy sheets.
Half a day later, it seemed, that machine finally reached the rinse cycle — meaning we couldn’t even go outside and sweat on the patio if we wanted to on Father’s Day because we had to wait on the washing machine.
Great, I thought, now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, as I pressed the button to unlock that great lock. Just as soon as I did all the water drained out of the machine before the red light turned to white and we were back to square one.
At that point I decided to just go ahead and dump the powered starch, melted in hot water that was no longer hot, into the tub with no water rather than into the fabric softener holder per the instructions and crank it up, and fill it up, and cut it off before it could drain out again.
That seemed to work. It agitated a little bit, the water didn’t drain out, I let the sheets soak in that starchy mixture a little while, then flipped the switch to “drain and spin” before the machine had a chance to figure out what I was doing.
It clicked and clacked and went into lock down mode again. The white light turned back red and I don’t think the Jaws of Life could have even gotten the lid open until that red light turned white. Kind of like a snapping turtle not letting go until it thunders.
Success!
Finally!
Starched sheets? Check.
Double washed sheets? Check.
Extra clean sheets? Check.
Crispy sheets?
Nope, they didn’t feel a bit different, but we slept pretty good anyway Sunday night!
