I recently ordered a new shirt online.  When I got the shirt I was a little annoyed to see on the tag that it was supposed to be washed in the “delicate” cycle.  The description on the website just said “machine care,” and I didn’t think about delicate when I saw that.  But perhaps that may be related to the machine that I have.  My 10 year-old washer doesn’t do delicate.  It only seems to have two settings:  Beat Me, and Beat Me Harder. 

Anyhow, I guess I’ll just have to have this one dry cleaned.  I do that with some of my shirts, even if they can be laundered, since they last longer that way.  But it’s a lot more expensive.

While I’m on the topic of laundry….  I’m of the considered opinion that whomever designed those stupid pictogram care guide symbols should be dragged off and shot.  I can’t make head or tail of those things.  Usually, when products resort to symbols it’s to allow people to understand some important bit of information without knowing any particular language.  But these symbols make absolutely no sense at all.  What the hell is a box with a circle in it with a dot in the circle supposed to mean?  If I have to resort to a laundry symbol guide to understand them, I think they’ve failed their purpose. 

From the guide I see that they’re trying to tell you temperature using dots (one dot = cold, two dots = warm, three dots = hot), but I’ve also seen a few that listed a temperature inside the little “washing” symbol.  Unfortunately, the one I saw said “40°C”, which does nothing for me.  Rather than dig out my calculator to do the laundry I threw the shirt to the side and left it there.  One of these days I guess I’ll figure out what that means in real temperature units and wash the damn thing.