The anti-wad.

Every now and then some average person comes up with an invention to solve a minor vexing problem, a problem so common that everyone knows about it, but it’s just annoying, so no one ever thinks to solve it. This person is just one of the faceless masses, and yet shows a spark of inspiration that is truly something special. 

Like Tomima Edmark, the inventor of the TopsyTail, the inventor makes something that takes off and makes them rich, inspiring us all. We may not think that we could come up with a clever invention, but we're always glad to see one of us make good. 

But the big question is: Does it work?

Well, the TopsyTail (now owned by Conair) has a proven record, and I am proven to have virtually no hair, so there's no point in me fooling with that. But what I do have is laundry, and like everyone else I am frustrated by how the top sheet and/or the fitted sheet will conspire in the washer and dryer to ball up and net the rest of the load, keeping everything from getting clean and dry. 

Until now! (Maybe!)

Wad-Free is a simple but clever device intended to keep your sheets well-mannered on washday. The pack comes with two Wad-Free dewadders, or perhaps they should be pre-unwadders — plastic squares with nubs. You attach each corner of the sheet to a corner of the Wad-Free, and off into the washer with it! 

Of course my wife bought it, but it was up to me to test it. I made up a load with some socks, a couple pair of sweatpants, some T-shirts, a bunch of pillowcases, a fitted sheet, and a top sheet. The latter two were fitted with Wad-Frees, and a simple operation it is to do. (The educational video noted on the instruction card is barely over two minutes long, but isn't really necessary.) Then I put the whole load in the front-loader on the Power Wash cycle, to test if the Wad-Free would hold on in such violent conditions. 

And waddaya know (har!) -- it did! 

Moreover, neither sheet got balled up and captured other wash items. So far the Wad-Free was working perfectly. But the dryer is the real test -- that's where most sheets will form a ball of damp clothing while going round and round. Would Wad-Free free us from the wads?

Almost a perfect yes!

Strangely, the only thing that got wadded up in the bottom sheet was the top sheet. None of the other articles got bunched up, and everything got dry. Also, had I dried the load on a gentle cycle as recommended, it's possible even the sheet mix-up would not have occurred.  

Amazing! 

Wad-Free is the invention of Cyndi Bray, who took to the show Shark Tank to get investors. I don't watch the show, but I will give them credit for investing in this one. As I said, a simple solution to a common problem, but a solution no one had seen before. I would not have guessed that pinning the sheet corners would have prevented wadding such as (what Cyndi calls) the Tornado Wad (tangled ropes), the Hostage-Taker Wad (things inside stay damp), or the Burrito Wad (everything stuck inside, everything stays damp). Good for her, and much success to her company, Brayniacs. 

Let me leave you with the Wad-Free slogan, which I think we can all agree is a winner: 

Truer words are seldom spoken.

Dishwasher safe!

Years ago when I wore baseball caps more to cover bed head than to cover lack of hair, my mom gave me a Ball Cap Buddy Hat Cleaner. These handy frames enable one to put a prized ballcap in the dishwasher on the top rack and let it be cleaned with the dishes. Amazing!

The big downside: My wife and I were newlyweds and our apartment had no dishwasher, not counting me. We had no washer or dryer either. By the time we moved into a house seven or so years later, I'd thrown the frame out or given it away. I just put my caps through the washing machine now. They're fine. 

It's surprising how many things can be cleaned in the dishwasher. I'm very happy that the new drainboard I bought a couple of months back is dishwasher safe. Drainboards tend to get grody over time, and the dishwasher does a better job of cleaning them than I do by hand. Of course they come out of the dishwasher wet, which leads to the conundrum of where to leave a dishrack when it's drying. 

Another thing that can go through the dishwasher is the lint filter on the dryer. This is something my wife told me yesterday, and it is the proximate cause of my posting on this topic today. We haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a good idea. The lint filter just never seems clean, even if you vacuum it, and when you have pets you figure it's just a lost cause. And that's bad, because lint buildup in the exhaust can cause a fire. Well, stick that sucker in the dishwasher and clean it on a microparticle scale! (If it mangles the filter I'll let you know.)

Some things are not dishwasher safe that I wish were. An example is the LickiMat, a fun-filled dog treat toy. You smear the mat with something soft like yogurt or peanut butter, freeze it for extra fun, and let the dog go on it. 

All our dogs have loved going after frozen liquid cheese (a.k.a. yogurt) on these. And I wish the mats could be cleaned in the dishwasher -- on the sanitize cycle -- but the plastic is floppy and too delicate. I tried one and it bent. So I scrub them with a brush and put the brush through the dishwasher. 

Other things that can't go through the dishwasher that you wish could include fine china, of course, but also a lot of novelty mugs. Those mugs that change design when a hot liquid is poured inside? If you want the secret image permanently imprinted, put it through the dishwasher. I have another mug that was a gift that says it's not dishwasher safe, but I ran it through once and it survived. Maybe it takes a couple of washes to rip off the glaze and ruin the design. 

Many other things cannot be run through the dishwasher. There's a strong caution on using the dishwasher to clean the following: 

🍽 Photographs

🍽 Chocolate

🍽 Electronics

🍽 Books

🍽 Pets, children, small adults

🍽 Ice

🍽 Furniture

🍽 Engine parts

Maybe the strangest thing you can do with your dishwasher is use it to cook. According to Ranker, potatoes, salmon, chicken, even turkey can be cooked up in your dishwasher. I don't why you would do it, but I suppose it cuts down on the dishes. And if there is cookware involved, you just leave it in the appliance and run it with soap. But I'm not going to try it.

Board of it all.

Today's trash day, and guess what is going out into the garbage and why! 

It's hard to tell, perhaps, from that picture, so I'll explain: It's our ironing board. And the weird angle is because it won't stand up. And it won't stand up because one of the legs snapped off by the hinge bit. And that's why it's going into the garbage. 

And why did it break?

Never iron angry.

Not me, not your level-headed model of coolness in the face of frustration Fred. Who's also a big fat liar. Actually the anger came from my wife, who was trying to iron the big curtains in the family room that had come out of the dryer, and they always seem to fight ironing like it's Ali and the iron is Joe Frazier. 

And she was allllllmost done when the board snapped and hit the floor. Which, as you can guess, just elevated her mood precipitously. 

But it should be noted that this is a pretty old board, as modern stuff goes. How old? Let me pull off the cover and show you the original surface....

That's right -- it was a Crayola-themed ironing board. Why? I am not sure. I just remember when we got married, and our previous roommates had owned the ironing boards in our lives prior to that, and no one puts ironing board on the bridal registry. So one Sunday night -- for some reason I'm certain it was a Sunday night -- we were shopping around and saw this one cheap. At the time, that being the nineties, Binney and Smith was licensing the Crayola name and logo on a lot of things, like stuffed toys and T-shirts. But why an ironing board? 

Well, apparently there are several craft projects that you can do with an ironing board and Crayola products. I suppose this ironing board was a way to promote that. I had plenty of Crayola crayons in my youth, but I promise you, my mom would never have allowed any of them near her iron.

Over the years we got some good use from the board, cheap as it was. In my office days I liked to have a nice pressed shirt -- that, children, was before recent times, when you can show up to work in your nothing but your nacho-stained underpants and no one cares. Often on Sundays I would iron shirts and some pants for the week, and maybe shine up the shoes. It wasn't all that long ago, but I feel like it was an entirely different galaxy from the one in which we live now. 

Well, I'm sorry to see the old board go. It was fun, even if we had to cover up the thin Crayola cover with a more sturdy padded cover with boring ol' flowers on it. I always knew there was a green crayon underneath anyway.

Washday!

Mondays were traditionally known as washday in the Western world. Sundays were the dress-up church days, the days to feast, and for those in domestic work (wives, daughters, servants), everything from table linens to undies got the treatment in the kitchen on Mondays. With everything being done by hand, and water heated on the woodstove, it was a much different process than it is now. 

Thank God, ingenuity, and capitalism that we don't have to do it that way anymore. 

Some people still hate dealing with laundry, and I can understand that. If you have to fetch the teens' perilously odiferous clothes from all over the room -- God forbid they should use the hamper -- you might resent the work, and you might almost wish for the old laundry pot on the woodstove, because at least you could boil the stink out of Junior's socks. 

If you have to use a Laundromat, or a communal laundry in your building or complex, you might also find it a heinous chore, stuck outside the home with anyone wandering by to watch you fold your unmentionables. My first apartment was a mother-in-law type arrangement that actually had a washer and dryer, but when the landlord threw me out to get his actual mother-in-law in the place, my next bachelor pad had no such amenity. I had to take my clothes down to one of the local laundries and sit there while they went round and round.

Except for the schlepping, it wasn't so bad, though. I'd go on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, when nothing much was going on. It was quiet enough so I could read there. During baseball season I could run across the street to a bar and watch the ball game for a while. But I had to make sure I got back before my quarters ran out. Once in a while someone comes up with the bright idea to open a combination laundry/bar, but we never had one where I lived in the city. 

I like doing laundry now. I have a washer and dryer off the kitchen, not downstairs in the unfinished crypt, and let's face it -- this is one chore now where the machine does most of the work. If I had a machine that could clean my refrigerator, I would be using it every week.