I still haven’t worked out how to use a washing machine. At 39, this is a bitter pill to swallow | Nell Frizzell

Do I choose the eco wash' setting and wait 17 hours? Or select short cottons' and doom the planet? Either way, dazzling whites and fluffy towels elude me

It was at the back of a school hall, sitting on a blue plastic chair, watching my son erratically kick a chest-height dummy while a medley of synth instrumental numbers twanged in the background, that I finally had to admit something I have long suspected: I have issues with laundry.

Like many of my generation, I am caught between late 20th-century social expectations about cleanliness and 21st-century anxiety about ecological impact. I am programmed to believe that I should wash all my tops after a single wear, while knowing that the profligate use of chemicals, energy and water involved in doing so is going to very quickly poison the planet. I dump whole items into the laundry basket where a quick spot wash with a cloth would almost certainly do the trick, and then stand at the riverside and despair at the state of the filth and flooding I have contributed to.