A stay at home Dad’s favourite appliances

May 1st, 2012

With all the Mother’s Day madness it’s easy to forget the 12,000 stay at home Dads in Australia. What are their favourite appliances and which make life easier?

Brett Lahman lives in Brisbane and takes care of his and his wife’s two (adorable) children, Georgie (aged six) and Kai (aged four).

This morning, Kai used three plates and three knifes for breakfast. So Lahman’s favourite appliance? The dishwasher.

“Everything goes in the dishwasher, even if it doesn’t fit it goes in!” he says laughing.

“We run it once a day, usually during the daytime because it’s very noisy.”

The family’s new iPad is also a winner. “It’s a no brainer isn’t it?”

“I like using it to check the surf since I never get to go out any more,” he laughs. “But I don’t like to watch the tele when I’m home alone.”

Lahman recalls a waitress asking Georgie what she’d like in her toastie pie. “Cheese and tomato sauce please!”

“I think my top appliances is the toastie pie machine. Kids love toasties, cheese and sauce, that’s all we ever have.”

“We also have this amazing six burner gas cooktop, I think it must be worth more than the house itself. But I only ever use one of the burners, the top left; it’s furthest from the kids’ reach so they can’t knock it. I think it will surely burn out soon and I’ll have to move onto another.”

Escalating energy bills are yet to impact this family, with Lahman saying that they don’t use appliances during off-peak hours to reduce energy costs.

Off-peak electricity hours tend to be from 9pm to 7am; inconvenient for a noisy dishwasher to be sure.

“What we do have is an enormous water bill. Kai likes to play with the hose all day so our water bill uses eight times the average.”

Keri Algar

Having once had to sit on the washing machine to stop it from bouncing into oblivion, Keri is today delighted with the new (smoother running) technologies that make housework easier every day. A self-confessed lazy-bones, Keri seeks out quirky inventions that ease the human workload, such as the robotic vacuum cleaner (wow). And as soon as someone figures out a Jetsons-like self-cleaning house, she will happily lay her pen to rest and retire from appliance journalism. Until then, her pick is a fridge that will tell her smartphone when it's time to pick up more beer on the way home. Magic.