I think I love my tumble dryer more than anyone else in my family right now.
Joking (kind of🤣).
I bought a tumble dryer in December 2024 and it’s hands down the best £379 I spent last year.
Domestically life-changing.
I was first swayed by the convenience of tumble drying during our family gap year back in 2018/2019. All the Airbnb’s in the US had them. Absolute Godsend for a family of four on the road.
Explaining why it took me over 5 years to buy one (despite clearly understanding the benefits of a tumble dryer) is a lesson on why even the most common household purchase is still very much driven by emotion.
”Dry your clothes in less time,” was not enough of a USP to sway me, and for five years we carried washing up two flights of stairs to hang in our loft to dry.
Barriers to buying sooner:
- Assumptions around price and cost to run
- Environmental impact
- Space
- Time to research all of the above
In the end, the emotional benefits of having a tumble dryer outweighed some of the barriers that were holding me back.
Emotional benefits:
Calm: reducing stress and tension around supporting my child's sensory needs (I need to wash and dry my child's favourite clothes and bedding -- that she wears and sleeps in on repeat -- as fast as possible and ideally without her noticing🥴).
Peace of mind: knowing that I can drop the ball and completely forget to wash uniform and football kits until about 9.30pm on a Sunday night and still manage to have clean dry clothes by 7am on Monday.
I didn't buy the tumble dryer because it dries clothes in less time, I already knew that. I finally forked out the £379 for all the other reasons.
When you market your products and services this week remember that functionality is only one element that drives customer purchases. Research regularly shows that emotion drives up to 70% of purchase decisions, even of the most mundane product.
But as businesses and marketers we continue to get obsessed by features and functionality.
I have a whole chapter on how to win in the emotional space with customers in my book. Chapter 5 is where you’ll find all the juice - many readers say it’s one of their favourite chapters.
Next on my domestic radar is an air fryer. Too many people are telling me how much it’s changed their life?
Have you got one? Convince me.
I didn’t see the point in air fryers (does literally the same as an oven and I already have two of those, plus it would mean losing more worktop space so I wasn’t keen to fork out hundreds for that). But then curiosity took over and I entered a competition for one and won, quite happy to trial it without the spend. Life changing is a stretch, the tumble dryer def winning on that front, but it has certainly made life easier. Healthier? No. Anyone who says it does is lying. It speeds up the cooking of mostly beige food so I can keep my children happy with a little bit longer in the park or if I’ve misjudged their hunger levels and therefore the timing of dinner. Most things can be whipped up in 10 mins or less, and when 10 minutes feels like a lifetime with moaning children around, plus factoring in a low cost per use as this happens a lot, I’d say they’re well worth it.