More Men Should Be Doing Laundry

These days, it seems that more men are doing household chores that were traditionally looked at as women’s work. It’s difficult to find solid research to conclusively prove the statement, but a 2021 study called the National Household Care Survey conducted by Oxfam Philippines and partner organizations in 2021 found that Filipino men spend an average of around eight hours a day doing chores like caring and supervision of dependents compared to just five hours a day in 2017. 

Of course, the study was conducted during a period when much of the country was still facing lockdowns caused by the pandemic. However, other studies point that men have slowly begun to do traditional housework commonly attributed to women. In fact, from 1979 to the year 2000, the time that men have been spending doing household chores has increased significantly. 

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That includes doing the laundry. Anecdotal evidence suggests that more men have begun to tackle the “dirty” job of washing their clothes. While many single men living alone in the city prefer to have their laundry done by commercial establishments, a growing number of them are purchasing washing machines to do the laundry themselves. My friend *Arnold, for instance, claims he actually enjoys the once-every-two-weeks ritual of going up to his condominium complex’s laundry room to spend a couple of hours washing and drying his own clothes. He says he finds the experience therapeutic. 

Personally, I’ve always gone to a laundry place to wash my clothes, and I’ve been doing it since I moved out of my family’s house and started living on my own when I was 20. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I did try to handwash my clothes in the beginning. Having seen my mother while we were growing up, I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. It took too much time and the experience itself wasn’t enjoyable. Later when I was earning enough for to support myself I was able to buy my own washing machine. But even that proved tedious and cumbersome and I ended up giving it to my mom. 

Since then I got used to the routine of dropping off my dirty clothes at my neighborhood laundry shop and picking them up a week or so later. While it was generally hassle-free, I never thought about the cost. What started as P20 per kilo soon ballooned to P25 and then P30 per kilo. I was easily spending over P300 per load every couple of weeks.

I might’ve opted to doing my own laundry if I was using a washing machine like the LG Washtower. Maybe I just never considered how much laundry tech has advanced since I got that first washing machine all those years ago, but there are products that have improved and made life truly easier and convenient for the modern man, and the LG Washtower is one of them.

Benefits of the LG Washtower

First off, the minimalist design is right up my alley. Both washer and dryer are stacked on top of one another, which not only saves on space but is actually elegant to look at. After the set-up by trained LG technicians, the unit is ready to be used.

And it doesn’t take an expert to figure out how to use it. Even if it’s your first time doing the laundry, the engineers at LG have made the Washtower incredibly simple to operate. The digital display located in the center panel combines the controls for both washer and dryer. It’s also designed from left to right, from the on/off button, to choosing what kind of clothes or fabric is in the load, and a customizable wash cycle time. There are also a few wash and dry options that you can try out depending on how big or small the clothes load is, the quality of the materials or fabrics, and how long you’d like to clean and dry the clothes. It’s all located in an easy-to-navigate touch-button display.

The Washtower features a few technical innovations, including AI and Deep learning tech, that enhances the effectivity of the wash and dry cycle. For example, it claims to be able to detect the characteristics of different fabrics in order to adjust the precise laundry movement for the appropriate softness. So for more delicate items, it uses more delicate motions, and uses more powerful motions for stiffer items. The Wastower also claims to reduce fabric damage by up to 12 percent without sacrificing performance.

All this contributes to taking away the tediousness of doing laundry and actually making it smooth and worry-free. Both washer and dryer also even gives off a pleasant and cheerful musical chime and lights up when the cycle is done. That means you can just throw your stuff in, manually adjust the settings, and leave it to do its job, while you can do other things, like maybe do other chores like washing the dishes or cleaning the house. Or take a break and watch something on Netflix.

I truly believe that if more men had access to the LG Washtower, they’d have no hesitations throwing outdated gender stereotypes about household chores out the window and elect to do their own laundry. And they’d have no problem doing it.