What is it about washing clothes? In my family my wife is the one who does it most of the time. It’s not that I’m not willing to do so but it seems that every time I do I end up not doing it to her standards. I wash the wrong clothes or wrong colours together, or I end up drying something that I should have let air dry. So to keep harmony in the household we have a working solution; she does the laundry and I do all the grass cutting.

Now an inventor in Spain has developed a washing machine that can’t be used by the same person twice in a row. Supposedly this is to help ensure that the men help out with the chore. Is this really a necessary use of technology? Just like the idea of our refrigerators scanning the bar codes on the items we put in it or talking to the toaster do we really need this capability in our household machines? If you can’t figure out what you have in the fridge by looking in it, or can’t come up with a working solution for doing household chores with the spouse then you have bigger issues going that smart appliances aren’t going to be able to fix.