We're sat at the table eating our tea when Crash's finely tuned bladder goes into action and needs emptying there and then. It would be easier if this happened every evening five minutes sooner so he went before he sat down, but nothing will tear him away from his book/toys/program a minute before he has to, so he generally waits until we've wrestled him to the table and said grace before he realises he needs to go to the bathroom. It does, however, help that it adds more minutes to his eating time as he eats at the speed of a two-day starved savage beast and then bounces on and off his chair until the others have finished and are ready for pudding, so we let the toilet trips go unchallenged.

However, on this occasion, we have nearly all finished before he reappears and he has to be called down the stairs. When he does come back, he's wearing different trousers.

'Crash, why did you change your clothes?' I ask, as he begins to wolf down his pasta.

'I did sit on the toilet but I missed a bit and it went on my trousers,' he tells me. 'But don't worry Mummy,' he continues in soothing tones, 'I put it in the washinsmurshuphl.'

(The last bit was absorbed in pasta sauce.)

'You put them in the wash basket?' I say, to clarify.

'No, in the washing fan.'

'What's the washing fan?' I ask, looking worredly at Richard.

'The spinner,' Crash says, indicating with his hands. 'To spin it round and round.'

'You mean the washing machine??'

'Yes, the washinsmurshuphl.'

I go up with a heavy heart - I know that a load has just finished in there and now it will have had weed-on trousers out on top of it all. Shall I just rinse it or put the whole thing through the wash again?

Then I see that I do not need to make the decision as Crash has taken the initiative to turn the machine on himself, and the clothes are spinning round in the mysterious 30 degree sports cycle, which I have never found a use for (I tend to stay away from anything with the word 'sports' in the description).

As I turn away, I realise that the cap is off the new bottle of non-bio liquid. The new mega-super-family-bumper-sized concentrated non-bio liquid. And the bottle is now half empty (yes, I know I could see it as half full, but in this instance, it's half empty, alright?).

'Craaaash!' I call, and he runs up the stairs, having finished his combat with the pasta.

'Yes?'

'Where's the wash liquid from in this bottle?'

We both know what the answer is, but I have to hear it on the slim chance that some of it may be redeemable.

'In dere,' he says, pointing, of course, to the soap drawer at the top of the machine.

'Noooooo,' I say.

I open it and the only dribble left is in the conditioner part of the drawer. The rest is empty, having drained into the machine. As I watch, I can see the suds building inside the drum.

I patiently explain to Crash that while I value him trying to help with my household burdens, it would be much better if just stuck to the jobs we had already assigned to him and leave anything that involves machines, fluid and no parental supervision alone. I empty the meagre contents of the conditioner drawer back into the bottle and mourn the loss of about 24 washes' worth of liquid all in one go. I change the cycle on the machine to the longest one I can find, then I sincerely pray to God that my machine will not explode nor overflow and cause any soapy water damage to the rest of the house.

Then I come down and ask Crash to clear the dinner table, which, after his demanding day of performing household chores, is clearly too much to ask, and results in an epic battle which involves the threat of stickers lost and much huffing and puffing on his behalf.

You will be pleased to know that 7kg washing machines can, remarkably, take in 24 times the required amount of liquid soap at once without blowing up or spewing their contents everywhere, but it does take at least four full-length cycles before clothes are in a wearable state and no longer covered in a soapy film which renders them impossible to dry or wear without discomfort.

This tip, along with other useful tidbits of information that I'm bound to discover in the next few months and years will surely have to be published one day into a volume entitled 'Pushing It To The Limits: Things You Never Knew You Or Your Household Appliances Were Capable Of.'