Chitra Ramaswamy

Published on Friday 8 May 2009 14:54

Sunday chez the house of Ramaswamy in Leith. C decides to put a wash on, an innocent domestic decision devoid of relationship risk. You would think. Fast forward an hour and 46 minutes and yours truly is rocking back and forth on the kitchen floor, knees pressed to cold slate, very small sopping cardigan in my arms, screaming: "Why???!!!"

Perhaps I should provide a little background. I loathe washing – to me, it's the Sachsgate of housework: dull, neverending and totally lacking in laughs. I'm not one of those women who lovingly handwash their delicates then roll them up in hot towels like swaddled babes. No, I'm an ironing and dusting kind of gal. This means C does the washing in our house. I think this a fair division of labour because I spend an equal amount of time moaning about how much I hate washing as C does loading, unloading, hanging out and, it turns out, shrinking my things.

To return to the scene of the crime. C does a handwash in the machine, which is an oxymoron but you get my drift. I chuck in my favourite cardigans. Big mistake. C has not looked properly and instead of putting the cycle on handwash has pressed cold wash. A negligible difference. You would think. My cardigans come out the size of postage stamps. They are ruined, as is mine and C's relationship. Interestingly, none of C's things have shrunk. This was a very cunning and cruelly targeted cold wash.

I want to be mature about this, to say "don't worry darling, accidents happen and seeing as I contribute little to the cleaning of clothes, I'm not really in a position to criticise". Instead what comes out is something along the lines of "how could you do this to me? I hate you!" This is not the first time this has happened, you see. Last year C shrank six cardigans in a single wash. We had only just started to move on from this incident.

The humble home is a relationship minefield. The outcome of Cardigangate is that C is now banned from washing delicates, which means I have to enter into a new relationship with our washing machine. There are no winners in housework wars.