New washing machine. Can't cope. Urgent advice. (Lighthearted)

[EntropyCentral]

My old washing machine was about 17 years old and very good until it packed in. Time for a new one.

So got a new one. And I'm shocked at the washing times!!

Eco : 3 hrs 45 mins

Easy care : 3 hours.

Cottons: 3 hrs 20 mins.

Way, way too long! Surely that will wear out the fabric of the
things being washed, being swished about in water and detergent for hours on end.

The easy care and mixed wash programmes are less than an hour so not an option. It's just not enough when you include two rinses. Surely things can't be clean in less than 30 mins.

There's a 'quick wash' button you can press on most programmes but then it reduces the time from 3hrs 45 mins to an hour. Which isn't quite long enough
if half of it is rinsing. I'm at my wits end. I want stuff to be clean but 3 hrs 45 mins
seems hugely excessive. And one hour seems not nearly enough.

I've read the manual, tested all the many various programmes and options available, pressed all the buttons and I still cannot make my new washing machine get in line and do what I want it to do. Which is to complete a wash in one hour and a half. Not almost 4 hours, or less than one hour. One and a half hours all told is all I ask. One hour wash, 30 mins rinse, like my old one did, very well, for many years.

I just want comments really. AIBU?

My view might be skewed because I'm old, and never met a washing machine until I was 18 and my mother got a sort of 'drum' washer with an agitator at the bottom. It washed your clothes and took most of the hard work out of washing.
You had to fill it up with hot water via a rubber pipe from the geyser in the kitchen.
When the things were washed you had to drain the dirty water out from the bottom into a bucket in stages and empty it down the sink.

Then you had to take the stuff out and wring it out by hand and then fill the drum up with cold water and put all the stuff back in to agitate and rinse. And you had to do that twice because once didn't get all the soap out. Obviously draining and filling as necessary. It all sounds like a load of faff, and it certainly was a load of faff. My two brothers and I often got home from school and helped my mother with this and that. They were both much older than me by 8 and 9 years so probably much more helpful than I was. But I did my bit.

In those far off days though, nobody had social media or mobile phones to distract them, and take them away from the here and now.. We got off the bus from school and walked home with our friends if they got off at the same stop.
If not then you walked home alone. It was so normal it simply wasn't an issue.
Kids walked home quite happily without a screen to stare at.

It makes me so sad when I see young people so engrossed in their phone screen. They are missing out on so much of real life. It's limiting their overall development as a functioning adult human being.

Is your post about washing machines or a commentary on modern society?

Anyway I agree in general. Machines these days can be too clever and not actually do want you want them to do. However our one automatically adjusts to the load so starts out suggesting it might be 3 hours but actually does it in 1.5. Still hard to plan in advance though!

Yeah, You're right. Just figuring out how to delete the post. Started off on one thing and finished on another.Wonder If I can delete it?

The eco is longer but uses less electric and water so less aggressive
Works more on soaking stuff rather than agitating it constantly
That's what the helpful water guy told me the other day anyway!

The long wash would drive me up the wall. My machine tends to carry on washing stuff until it decides it's clean, so an hour's mixed load doesn't usually get released much before 90 minutes.

Mine has a time reduce button (not actually called that) so it’s just over an hour and that is plenty. It always seems less than an hour though.

My washing machine has the option to make a step - eg wash cycle - longer. I can change the default settings or do it as just a once of if it's not something I do often. My cycles are around an hour and clothes come out clean. I've got a speedy 30 min cycle as well, for smaller loads and it's also very effective.

I was about to say modern machines wash better but I hated my last machine. It didn't wash well at all. I love the new one. Old one was a top loader but I've had a few of those and they have always washed decently until that one. New one is a front loader and washes so much better.

You said the easy care cycle was 3 hours and then that it was less than an hour - which is it?

Why didn’t you look up the times and options before you bought it?

An hour is absolutely fine, unless your clothes are incredibly dirty of course and then the 3hr cycle might be better. They 2hr programs are great for day to day washing, clothes come out clean

Same thing happened to me OP and it drives me mad. Yes I should have checked the programmes before buying but I assumed they would be of a muchness as they had been with all my previous machines.

I believe that the 3 hour cycles use less water than the 1 hour cycle for a mixed load but who wants a 3 hour cycle??!!

90% of the time I use the one hour mixed load programme. It seems to work well enough but like you I was expecting a 90min ish programme. My machine wasn't cheap, it's a Bosch. Presumably all new machines are like this now for eco reasons? I wouldn't have bought it if I'd realised what the programme options were.

The hour cycle is fine op, honestly. I've just replaced mine after 7 years and already I can see that it's so superior in it's washing than the old one. It will become normal again.

I wash everything except towels and bedding on 30 at 30.

Everything comes out clean. An hour would be more than sufficient.

When your mother had a twin tub did each wash go in for an hour? Of course not!

With modern machines and detergents unless you have very dirty clothes an hour for a wash is plenty.

Both my dishwasher and washing machine have eco programmes and both get ‘fired off’ before I go to bed at night or out for the morning… but I hear you!

They’re both about 10 years old, so I can only imagine any replacement would then take about a week to do a wash 🤣

I always feel like the 'eco' setting on the washing machine and dishwasher are a trap to be honest.
How is it possible to have the damn thing on for hours and hours and be more eco friendly than if it just went for it and got the job done in 30 minutes!
Anyway, it's all neither here or there when you consider the built in obsolescence of each machine......you'll probably be replacing the thing in 5 years so any good that came out of the eco cycle will be undone by the manufacture of the next model you have to buy.

I feel your pain.
I swapped my trusty Siemens washing machine with a seemingly nearly identical one of the same brand. I hate it.
The cotton wash is nearly 3hrs.
The eco wash is over 4hrs. The eco wash doesn't wash properly, clothes come out smelling unclean - like damp dirty water.
There is a fast wash button, but we found pressing this means things don't rinse very well. Lots of the programs automatically select a low spin speed, I can up this with the spin button, but often forget, so have to spin again when I realise the washing is soggy.
There's no prewash! so when washing really dirty stuff I have to run 2 programs.
So frustrating and I probably use more electricity/water by circumventing their eco measures.

Think of it like a car, you want to go somewhere which is say 50 miles away, you can drive at 50mph or 100mph, takes half the time but does it use the same amount of petrol?

Makes you wonder why engineers spend time on working out efficient ways to make machines when they could just ask mners who feel like an hour's enough 😂

I e hot this hot point thing that came with our house. I was initially appalled by such a poor brand name but it’s got wash cycles galore, you can choose the temperature independently of the wash cycle chosen AND you can choose between several different lengths of programme within each programme iygwim.

I rarely use a wash cycle that’s lasts much more than an hour except for bedding and my
laundry is always clean.

We do 15 or 20 min washes for everything. No need for longer!

i bought a new washing machine 2 years ago and the eco cycle is 2.5 hours which I use a lot. But it also has a lot of 1 hour cycles and even a 15 minute one and they all seem to work fine. My clothes smell great. So I’m not sure why you’re obsessed with a 90 minute cycle?? Though yes, the world is going to hell in a handcart etc…

Mine has 3 short cycles (14, 30 and 44 minutes) my clothes come out clean on the 30 minute cycle. Every so often I'll put my gym kit in on 44 if I've had a really sweaty session.

I've never used the long cycles. I'll do an extra spin on the towels as it helps to dry them quicker. I can change the temperature and spin speed on all washes so it makes no difference if its 30 minutes for 300 minutes.

The just under the hour washes are fine. Can't you set it so it's on overnight?

They don't swish the clothes around for 3 hours. They incorporate long periods of soaking so that they can use less water and lower temperatures. That's how it's more eco. If you have a smart meter or the machine has a built in app thing you can compare the energy and sometimes water usage of different cycles which I find helpful.

Does it have a button that sounds like it might speed things up? That is what my old one had which was quite good. That would take a 3h45 cycle down to about 1h40 or the standard 2h20 cycle down to 1h10 (which would actually take about 90 mins). The quick cycles are usually no good because they are designed for about 3 t-shirts and the easy care I don't understand who that is aimed at because it barely spins anything so it comes out sodding wet.

OTOH I got a new one recently and it automatically weighs the clothes and then uses that to calculate the cycle length, which is fine in theory except it doesn't let you override this which I find annoying. If I want to re-wash a load because it got forgotten about or it was extra dirty so it doesn't seem clean at the end of a cycle, it weighs it and thinks I've somehow defied physics and shoved every piece of clothing in the house into it and tries to run a 4 hour wash. Which in that case is not more eco because I've seen the app readout of how much energy it uses 😬 so I have to faff about taking 3/4 of it out, letting it calculate, then pause and shove everything back in to let it complete. Bonkers.

I only ever used the one hour wash on my old machine. Now got a new one and delighted the what I consider normal wash is reduced to 45 minutes.

Why wouldn't that be long enough? What is your Goldilocks length of wash you're looking for?

I wash everything at either 20 mins or 1 hr, of course it's clean.

What brand is it? Mine and my mum's are LG and Samsung and they weigh the clothes on a normal cycle so a medium load takes about 1h40mins. A massive load and a duvet will be 3h3mins.

I use quick wash, 30 mins, all the time. Perfectly clean.