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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

The new washer/dryer all in one is absolutely confusing to me.

So you can leave your clothes in one machine, and in two hours everything is washed and dried.

But now I have to wait two hours for each load of laundry, versus 45 minutes and swap between machines. They have effectively more than doubled the time laundry takes.

Who thought that was a good idea?

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Laundry latency is not a problem for me. I do not have consecutive loads 90+% of the time. I have 3-4 loads a week.

On the other hand, I do have limited space for appliances, so in many places I've lived buying a seperate washer and dryer would mean either forgoing a dishwasher, or getting a condenser dryer and installing it in the corner of some random room away from the other appliances (which would technically be a code violation as then it wouldn't have its own dedicated RCD).

So I get a combo unit, turn it on and forget about it for several hours (when I'm home all day, I even use the eco mode, which takes 6 hours for a combined wash and dry). Come back later in the day and unload. It actually does have a 60 minute wash + dry cycle but I rarely use it as it uses a very hot dry cycle which risks shrinking clothes.

And I'm probably more like a load every week or two. While I do find a larger washer handy every now and then I'm sort of regretting I didn't replace both my ancient washer and dryer with something that could handle both or could be stacked when my increasingly dysfunctional washer finally gave up the ghost.

I love my LG washer/dryer combo. Yes, it takes a bit longer, but it's half the work from my point of view.

I only load and unload clothes once (not twice).

I only program a machine once (not twice).

One big feature my LG has is it will keep rotating the drum a half a turn every few minutes, so you can take the dry, clean clothes out much, much later, and they will not be wrinkled.

As others have said, if you're limited on space in your house it's a bonus. In my case I converted the space that would have been taken up by a second unit stacked vertically into large storage area with shelves.

Did you consider not buying a product which doesn't suit your use case? Did the market suddenly lose all single function devices?

Why is it a trend to act as if you shouldn't have any opinions about something just because there are other things you can buy?

I did not buy an all in one. I was just saying that they don't make sense to me.

I'm allowed to have opinions. I'm a human.

There are people who do not have enough suitable space for both a washer and a dryer.

I am one of them, so I am happy to use a combined washer and dryer.

The only place where I can put the washer and dryer is in a bathroom. Separate washer and dryer would make it unacceptably crowded.

Some front loaders can be stacked (this is more common in Europe) so if space is the only issue you can get the benefit of the specialized equipment.

Outside of the US, (Latin america, europe, asia) it is more common to have an all in one usually in the kitchen. A lot of the foreign workers who stayed in corporate housing we had didn't even know what a dryer was or how to use it.

This assumes you have the vertical height to stack them. In Europe the utility connection points are usually in a kitchen or utility room under a cupboard, with a counter top on top and more storage above that.

(e.g. this kind of arrangement: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... )

In Germany and Switzerland, washers and dryers are usually in the basement, otherwise in the bathroom. In the UK and Ireland, they're usually in the kitchen. Unsafe to generalize.

In Paris my dryer and washer were in the kitchen, but vertical. In Berlin, they were in a closet next to one of the bathrooms, also vertical. In both cases apartments, if that matters.

The new generation of appliances are more energy and resource efficient. They trade the off with using more time, though.

Nearly all appliances have a „quick“ mode though if you really need something fast.

No it's not efficiency. It's the washing and drying being done in one machine. I cannot do both jobs concurrently.

Then I’m even more confused what the problem is. Do you have so much laundry that you keep both machines perpetually running in parallel? I can only imagine that happening if you have a household of 8+ people.

Perpetually, no. But for my family, with both machines ruining, we still have 4 hours of washing (5 loads each).

These machines would double that amount of time, because I couldn't run the dryer at the same time. That's what I'm saying.

Datapoint: as someone who lives in a small apartment without room for two machines, the combined washer/dryers are wonderful for me. I'm on board with the initial article, but it made me realize that enshittification is relative - to some people, the "unnecessary features" are actually useful. Maybe enshittification is actually a lesson on how to slice a product into different product lines?

Valid. Your point is valid.

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