A complex view of laundry

A complex
view of
laundry
Dr. Ricardo Sosa (rdsosam@itesm.mx)

Laundry


Laundry
Two main meanings: “soiled
clothes and place for doing the
wash”


Laundering
Necessary: cleanliness, hygiene


Washing machines
Complex systems:
social acceptance
family interactions
health, pride, security


Laundering
Yet, highly absurd means!


18 main steps
1) Select and buy new clothes (frequency, type)
2) Increase or replace your wardrobe
3) Designate a storage space (constraints, order)
4) Most items, most of the time remain stored
5) Garment selection is highly circumstancial
6) After wearing, decision-making to be cleaned or reuse (smell beats stains)
7) Dirty clothes are temporarily 'stored' in basket and they get dirtier
8) At designated or available times, groups of clothes are washed in cycles (sorting)
9) Decision-making on type of cleaning: washer, by hand or drycleaning
10) Clean water is added to all soiled garments, cleaning agents are added (detergent, bleach)
11) All water is soiled, and all garments share the dirt (different sources & degrees)
12) Cleaning depends on: catalytic reaction (enzyme), friction and rinsing
13) Output: tangled garments, bottlenecks in the process
14) After cycle, decision-making to repeat cycle
15) Machine remains idle most of the time
16) Water and energy consumption is huge and concentrates at peak times
17) Lack of feedback in the washing cycle: “black box” process
18) Limited control of drying process, decision-making for ironing/folding/storing


18 issues & conundrums
1) Smell is an important criterion in decision-making -perhaps more than stains
2) Sensorial perception of 'efficient cleaning' (noise, speed)
3) Lots and lots of water wasted unnecessarily
4) Idle machine takes lots of valuable space
5) Water reuse is not supported in the cycle
6) No feedback or guarantee of cleaningness
7) Key prejudices and assumptions, some untrue
8) Bottlenecks: water filling, clothesline, dirty/clean storage
9) Main water pollution is the cleaning agent (detergent)
10) Shape is highly converged
11) Socio-economic target niches are rather blurry in washing machine design
12) Key differences between housewifes-working women (time)
13) Washing is a parallel process and preferred over other chores
14) Clothes damages may indicate good level of washing (trade-off)
15) Experience and elder teachings are crucial
16) Power relations (maids-owner) and emotional relations (mom-family)
17) Cultural judgements based on the type of clothing
18) “One machine cleans all” clothes


Negative feedback cycles
“Mabe does top-loading washers because
people buy top-loading washers because
Mabe does top-loading washers because...”


Bifurcation
Clean water is used to do laundry.
End result is (lots and lots) of wasted, dirty
water and (more or less) clean clothes.
Soap is the main pollutant of water.

Fuzzy feedback
Washing machines are “black boxes”: people
add water + soap + clothes and expect to get
clean clothes, without any real control or
feedback of the process

Scale
Most of the time, washing machines are idle.
They take up valuable space at home, yet they
are used less than 5% of the time (consuming
in peak times water and electricity)

Entropy
Laundry is an entire cycle of order-disorder:
clothes are (more or less) classified in the closet,
then gradually piled up in basket, then all mixed
in laundry, then re-classified after drying.

?
Information
Almost all dirt & stains are treated equal:
there is no control over origin of stains,
source of dirt, levels of smell. After a
threshold, it's all the same.


!
Emergence
A load of laundry is unpredictable: never
the same combination of fabrics, dirt, etc.
Often times, unexpected results


System
The washing machine is the front-end of the
entire plumbing system at home


Holography
Detergent is laundry
Dirty clothes is laundry
Clothesline is laundry

Auto-poiesis
Personal need of washing clothes is created by social
pressure created by the sum of personal needs.
Interaction: society-individual-washing machine


Auto-poiesis
Washing machine is used to clean clothes after they
get dirty. Could washing be done right before
wearing a garment? Or while? Could washing (or
dirtying) be prevented altogether?


http://www.wowowow.com/politics/rush-limbaugh-vatican-vacuum-cleaner-not-washing-machine-
most-liberating-women-233262

http://www.gizmohighway.com/history/washer.htm

http://home.howstuffworks.com/washer.htm

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=clotheswash.pr_clothes_washers

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=clotheswash.clothes_washers_advanced_technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMXpKmRXvU&fmt=18

Mabe


Random ideas


http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story/Washing-machine-suds-up-les-
chiens/Nlp6OPlocUu9ZrM5T6xccA.cspx

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/international/asia/05JAPA.html


A complex view of laundry

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