Not-so-neat freak throws in the towel
9th November, 2007

You start wondering when your dwelling smells like a wet dog and you haven't had a canine companion for more than six years. Checking that a wet dog had not somehow managed to sneak into our home and hide under a bed - it hadn't - I started the room-to-room sniff test, which more or less narrowed it down to the laundry. I flipped the lid of the washing machine, stuck my head inside and took a tentative snort. A second later I was clutching at the towel rail for support as my eyes watered and my lungs gasped for breath. "Ah yes," I muttered as my stomach threatened to rise in rebellion, "that'd be those towels I washed three days ago and then forgot about." There are few things that can match a wet dog for odour but three wet towels left to ferment in a washing machine for 72 hours will go close. Perhaps, I thought, if I washed them again, the detergent would rinse away the smell. So I spun the dial and sent the towels around once more. Domestically it had not been a good week for I had already been criticised by my wife for the state of our fridge and the tracks along which the sliding back doors travelled.    "When was the last time you cleaned these?" she asked, peering down at the tracks.    "Last week," I lied, for who has ever heard of anyone cleaning sliding-door tracks? Life, surely, is too short. There followed signs and muttered epithets among which the words "filth" and "pig" featured prominently, and then the roar of the vacuum as the tracks were cleaned for the first time since we had moved in. There are two standards of domestic cleanliness in the world - the boy standard and the girl standard. The former states that if it looks clean from a distance of five metres, then it is. The latter requires it to be surgically spotless when viewed from a range of five centimetres. The fridge exterior had passed the girl test but it was the contents that fell short, the one-week-old spaghetti bolognaise I had been saving for a special occasion attracting special mention.    "It's got red wine in it," I said. "It needs time to mature."    "It's covered in mould," she said.    "Only on the outside," I replied. The dishwasher had also been causing problems. Apparently one should read the instructions before using it, which would explain why the little box in which you put the detergent was jammed solid with white gunk and the plates were coming out dirtier than when they went in. A trying week indeed, but the more immediate matter of the smelly washing machine now weighed heavily. Even I thought the smell barely tolerable and I have a high olfactory threshold. Suddenly, inspiration dawned, I'd ring my wife's old neighbour. She scrubbed her insect screens with a toothbrush. Anyone who did that would know how to cure a malodorous washing machine.    "I need help," I said, explaining the problem.    "Vinegar," she said.    "Pardon?"    "Vinegar," she repeated. "Put vinegar in the washing machine and turn it on. It kills the wet dog smell."    "Balsamic vinegar?" I asked.    "White vinegar, idiot," she said sweetly.    "I don't suppose soy sauce would be any good?" I asked.    "White vinegar," she said again and hung up. She was right, but who would have thought it? Women really are the most amazing creatures.

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