War of the White Goods

I am living in the land of the great unwashed. Why? Because household appliances in America do not clean properly. Indeed I'm thinking of starting a campaign to have washing machines and dish washers renamed "rinsing machines" and "dish rinsers" since whatever programme you choose, your clothes and plates come out only marginally less dirty than when they went in. 

We first thought it had to do with our cleaning products. So we bought others. But that changed nothing. So we assumed it was because our machines were old, and replaced them with brand-new ones. Same difference.

After lots of head-scratching and in-depth research, we can now conclusively say there there is not one underlying cause, but three:

1. You can't get the kind of detergents you buy in Europe (the only Ariel you find round here is a mermaid). American supermarkets only stock domestically machinufactured products with fancy names like Hey Presto! (as in "Watch your money disappear down the drain") that seem intrinsically incapable of removing dirt;
2. You can't get the kind of brands of white goods that you get in Europe (the only Whirpool you find round here is in your bathtub); and most crucial of all
3. American dishwashers are made differently. (a) They have not one water inlet, but two; one for hot water, the other for cold; and (b) They do not have an internal heating system. So whereas in Europe your machine takes cold mains water and heats it up to the required temperature, its American counterpart just takes some cold water, mixes it with some hot, and attempts to wash using the resultant lukewarm brew. If your hot water isn't very, the machine fills up with the wrong ratio or the cold water pressure is far higher than that of the in-house hot water system (we fall into the "all of the above" category), you end up wearing freshly-washed dirty clothes and eating off plates with inbuilt flavourings on them.

Which reminds me, I've got some clothes to hand (re-)wash and dishes to (re-)clean. 'Scuse me.