Am I right to hide my little obsession?

Sometimes I think my life revolves around the washing machine.

No, seriously.

I plan jaunts to the shop around a large grey appliance in my kitchen.

I organise seeing friends around a gadget which cost more than my entire wardrobe.

And I spend more time thinking about its various cycles than I ever deemed possible in my footloose and fancy free twenties.

I know everyone has their own little domestic foibles, so I’m sure you’re imagining your own as you learn of mine.

Maybe your own washing machine has next to no effect on your daily life, but you can’t leave the house until the bathroom is spotless, the breakfast dishes are tidied away or the cat mat has been hoovered.

I couldn’t care less about any of those things, but no judgement here.

I only realised how large my obsession with the monstrous appliance had grown when I found myself turning down the offer of coffee with a friend because I don’t like to let wet clothes sit in the drum while I’m out and about.

I know, I know.

When she asked me what was more important than a good natter and I heard myself lying, I knew I was in dangerous territory.

I don’t know what it is, but I can’t stand the thought of not airing or drying clothes immediately after they’ve been through their final spin.

I imagine shrinkage, I picture mildew and I panic over lost socks.

Don’t get me wrong, I tend to schedule my washes when I know I’ll be in the house for a couple of hours to ensure everything runs with military precision, so the problem doesn’t feature too massively in my life until something threatens to interrupt my time with the machine.

I know nothing will happen if the clothes stay in the drum. I know the world won’t collapse around me if another family member is left to unload the machine and I’m certain if I break the habit, I’ll forget a time when I had ever nicknamed the appliance, but right now I don’t care.

God knows, I let so much other housework slide that I take pride in my no-nonsense approach to laundry and all it entails.

My mother was anal about dado rails and skirting boards and used spend thirty minutes a day roaming my childhood home with a wet cloth, determined to find a speck of dirt on the wood finishings she had spent the previous day attacking.

My friend is utterly obsessed with her slow cooker. She talks about it incessantly. She cleans it with the same loving touch you might tend to a newborn and she has been known to say goodbye to it before she places it in the cupboard for the evening.

Bizarre? Absolutely, but I can’t judge.

Why?

Because I love spending the last five minutes of any cycle, coffee in hand, watching the drum spin at its highest intensity before coming to a juddering halt and emitting a long high-pitched beeping noise.

What? It’s my thing.