The kitchen appliance you can’t live without

I don’t mean the small things like the kettle (or in my case the toaster, tea maker, coffee machine, waffle maker or Thermomix.   Blimey I am not sure I could live without any of them).  I mean the bigger things, the “white goods”.   Beko recently commissioned a survey to find the kitchen appliance people couldn’t live without and a resounding majority said the fridge freezer.

My knee jerk reaction to that is to agree.   We have an American style fridge freezer, and I really couldn’t live without that.   Over the years I have become more and more of a foodie and as the number of people living under our roof has declined, my ramming the fridge full hasn’t.   “Just in case people come over for lunch”.   I am really bad about buying “just in case” food.   Or deciding I am going to have a week of nothing but smoothies so the two vegetable trays get rammed.   Which means we then have to do things like eat 60 mozzarella sticks on Sunday afternoon because the bag I bought in the cash and carry thinking we might have friends over for the football didn’t happen.

But when I sat and thought about it a bit more it wasn’t the fridge freezer that I felt I couldn’t live without.  It is the washing machine.

In a bizarre way it is the soundtrack to my early mornings.   And a big part of my life.     When my teens were babies we lived in a bungalow so their bedrooms were pretty close to the kitchen.   I had a full time job out of the house then so the tumble drier was always on in the evening because there was just so much school uniform and kit.   People often joked that my kids wouldn’t sleep without the tumble drier being on, and they were probably right!

When we moved bedrooms went upstairs and we also gained a utility room.  And space for a separate washing machine and tumble drier, and a banister to dry towels over.  You never think about that with a bungalow do you?  There is no banister so nowhere to hang towels and sheets.      We use the tumble drier less and less now.   But the washing machine is the one that is on at least once a day.

Now I am home all day it is on in the morning as I wander downstairs with an armful of yesterday’s stuff for all of us, and various cast off towels or bedding ready to go in the washing machine.

The alarm that goes off when it is finished it’s first load is the signal that it is also time for another cuppa.

Which means I love it just a little bit more than the fridge freezer that so many others adore.

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