I went to Sears, Roebuck & Co. because I wished to wash deliberately, to front load all the essential vestments of life, and see if I could get them sufficiently clean, and not, when I came to dirt, discover that I had no way of expunging it.

I did not wish to spend my entire life washing, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation—and ask my mother to do it — unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to wash deep and suck out all the stains of life, but also to wash so swiftly and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to clear a broadcloth and also scrub knits, to drive dirt into a drain, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

And, if the garment proved to be clean, to get the whole and genuine cleanness of it, and publish its cleanness to the world, or if it were sub-prime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion to Whirlpool Corporation.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about the machine, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “fill’er up.”

Thus we clean incessantly, like laborers; though the advert tells us we will suddenly be changed into men of leisure; like acolytes we chase after self-cleaning lint filters and infinite water level control; it is pre-wash upon pre-soak, and spin cycle upon rinse cycle, and our best results have for their occasion a heavy-duty and inevitable agitation.

Our life is frittered away by advanced settings. An honest man has hardly need for more than a handful of cycles, or in extreme cases, he may add a special cycle for knits, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your options be avocado green or tawny gold, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million cycles, count half a dozen, and keep your spin speeds on a single knob.

For my part, I could easily do without the bleach dispenser. I think that there are very few improvements made through it. To speak critically, I never achieved more than one or two truly white garments that were worth the weakened fibers.

Clean is but the stream I go a-washing in. I scrub with it; but while I scrub, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but the stubborn stain remains.

Found texts:

Sears Kenmore Washing Machine Print Advertisement from the 1970s.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1854.
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Amy Greenlee writes to the sound of her children screaming. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s, Slackjaw, The Belladonna Comedy, Jane Austen’s Wastebasket, Frazzled, and The Weekly Humorist. She is the editor of the TV humor publication Pause Button and the creator of The Gospel of Jest, a short form humor blog featuring internal monologues from disgruntled disciples, the holy family behaving anachronistically, biblical literalism ad nauseam, and other such things. You can also find her on Twitter @greenleeish.