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Those of you men-folk out there who live with women-folk have no doubt learned that women's clothes take quite a lot more attention when doing laundry. Men's clothes -- at least this mans's -- require almost no attention: you just make sure there aren't any pens in the pockets (sometimes you skip this step) and throw everything into the washer, then throw it all into the dryer.

Nicer Clothes Require More Attention

Women's clothes, of course, require all sorts of checks: Is it a bra? If so, skip the dryer? Can this be put in the washer, but not dryer? Can this even be put in the washer? Womens clothes, you see, are typically much nicer, and, thus, complex and brittle (in the software sense) than men's. (Again, at least this mans's.)

It's enough to make a man-head all jumbledy and result in a long, difficult process of twisting several bras around and shrinking all sorts of frilly, silky shirts and skirts.

RFID!

So I got to thinking this afternoon while I was mindlessly moving a lump of whites from the washer and dryer: this sounds like a job for RFID! Each piece of clothing would be tagged with a wee RFID that would broadcast (or whatever) at least the answer to the questions:

1. Can you be put into a washer?
2. Can you be put into a dryer?

The washer and dryer would scan for clothes before starting and make a terrible beeping noise. Hopefully it'd give you a read-out better than "Err," but even that would be better than destroying more of your sweety's clothes.

Stupid RFID

This is the kind of thing that I think RFID will make money from right off the bat: (1.) preventing people from doing stupid things and (2.) "thinking" for them. The kinds of things I'm thinking of are even simpler than the classic "you need to get milk" RFID examples (the system needs to be smart enough to know that you had milk and that you'd want more milk).

For example, if I buy the wrong car part and jam it into my car ("jam" because it's the wrong part), with Stupid RFID, my car would beep at me and tell me "wrong part, dumb-ass."

The mind can easily cook up more scenarios like these.

Tags: appliances, ideas, laundry, home, rfid.