1 Minute Washing Machine

Its hard to tell from the pictures how much it holds.  It makes it look like one piece at a time.  If that is the way it works I'd be standing at the washer all day with my family of four.

This looks sleek and TOO good to be true! It's probably for one item at a time.

So it looks like the 1 minute washer was designed by two students from Korea for a 2005 competition arranged by designboom and Electrolux.  The goal of the contest was to get proposals for appliances in a 2020 home.

The competition description was:

how will we live? how will we entertain our guests?
how will we keep our homes clean?
---
we are looking for product ideas around
- cleaning clothes
- cleaning dishes
- cleaning floors
- storing drinks
- storing food
- cooking...

In terms of the 1 minute washer, the designers said this:

In the future, more people will live by themselves and live on a busy life. I suggest a washing machine that finishes laundry in a minute. The basic design motive comes from the human ‘intestine’ (stomach, small intestine, and large intestine) that manages digestion of food. Corporate identity also is an important factor, so that I took ‘E’ from Electrolux as the design motive. When laundry is put in, it goes through a certain cycle like a relay-race and the washing completes. It is a no-soap washing machine that operates without harmful chemicals which pollutes the environment. Rather, it runs with water changed by electronic decomposition, breaks down protein, washes clothes with great water pressure, eliminates water with vacuum cleaner, and lastly disinfect with ultraviolet sterilizer. All of these processes completes within a minute. Lights appear as the clothes move around, and the ultraviolet wave leaks so that it adds on to the interior beauty of the house.

So the machine doesn't actually exist...I'm not really scientific to know if their theories behind it hold up.  But it sure sounds cool!

 hahaha so many problems with this idea -- most glaring of which was already identified (what are we going to do? wash our laundry one piece at a time?).  if more than one was stuck in that think, it'd get clogged up!!  just like intestines!!  ;)

Although this doesn't exist it sounds really cool and you have to give them props for thinking alternatively. If this product did exist, it would need to take care of a load of laundry in a minute instead of one piece of clothing! But I really like the idea!! Inventive!

Hahahahaha....oh my.  That would be unforunate. 

In other news, I did learn about a device that's supposed to wash clothing without soap.  It's called the LaundryPure (made by EcoQuest).  Theoretically, it's a mod unit for any washer...and it uses oxygen and peroxides in cold water to clean your clothing.  I'm not really sure how it works...and what the environmental implications of using peroxide are.  But the idea of cleaning without soap or hot water is certainly interesting.