Meg Mason’s trademark take on DIY dramas

Our Agony Aunt Meg Mason dishes out somewhat questionable style and decorating advice to would-be DIY renovators

My wife and I are currently choosing appliances for a new utility room. Until now, we’ve always had a top-loading washing machine but I keep reading that front-loaders are more energy-efficient and use less water. Is it time to make the switch? Dan, via email

When it comes to matters of the environment, Daniel, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a keener conscience than me. I wouldn’t sip imported water from a plastic bottle, burn a halogen globe or create enviable volume with an aerosol hairspray if my life depended on it.

So committed am I to the eradication of single-use plastic, I’ll go out of my way to cast a judgemental look at any shopper loading shrink-wrapped oranges into disposable supermarket bags, or swat a plastic straw out of the mouth of a stranger. And on those days I remember my eco-cup, you can be sure the rest of the cafe will know about it.

But when it comes to the ‘top-loader versus front-loader’ debate, I find myself coming over all climate-change denier, actively trying to stay ignorant to the fact that older-style top-loaders, generally speaking, do use more water than whizzy new front-loaders and, probably, yes, the same amount of energy for a single rinse-and-spin as it takes to power a small town.

If I let my awareness be raised on that front, I’ll have to give up the delightful sloshing and chugging of my top-loader’s uncomplicated normal wash, and the convenience of being able to toss in a dropped sock 10 minutes after the cycle has begun, for a front-loader’s dazzling array of specialty settings – sportswear, denim, babywear, woollen sportswear, denim babywear, single sock – a “quick” wash that is 190 minutes long, and a door that won’t unlock until I’m kneeling in front of it, tugging and begging and weeping for want of a clean tea towel.

Soon enough, Daniel, I imagine guilt will compel me to make the switch. If you’re as ecologically minded and flagrantly self-righteous as I, now seems like a sensible time to go full frontal. Of course, our environmentally aware children will thank us profusely… until they need their PE gear washed and dried in under nine hours. After a decade of renting, saving and a very long search, I’ve managed to buy a home of my own. I’m an outgoing person with a busy social life, but all of a sudden I don’t want to go out. Friends are teasing me about becoming a shut-in. I know they’re joking but should I worry? Maxine, Avalon, NSW Between knocking out all those five-act dramedies, Shakespeare found time to observe that “people usually are the happiest at home”. If that’s true for a man whose home most likely had a sawdust floor, vermin in the flour sacks, an ambient temperature of minus four and a nameless wench expiring of plague in the spare room, of course it’s true for you.

Extrovert, introvert… most of us are nesters at heart, hygge- ers before there was a name for wearing socks while watching TV. You’ve finally found your nest, so why would you go out ever again? I’ve been out, Maxine, and I don’t recommend it. It’s only traffic and queues and restaurants that don’t take reservations. It’s $16 glasses of rosé and leaving your phone in the back of an UberX. So, except to buy essential provisions and get just enough vitamin D to keep the rickets at bay, I say stay where you are.