Naturelich

A few seconds ago, Naturelich had a(nother) sudden inspiration. While I was hanging up the washing I was wondering about the duration of this process. Doing the washing is a time-consuming process and therefore prone to economic analysis. Suppose you have extremely good friends waiting in your favorite chat and you are absolutely tired. Suppose it is 00:48:43 a.m. Now, you obviously want to spend at least 5.5 hours sleeping and you have to get up at 7 a.m. at the latest. Thus, you have to be in bed at 1:30. The friends are waiting and waiting. Thus, you need to minimize the time to put the washing on the line.

The housewife-readership may forgive us for starting with a simplified process first. We therefore assume the process of hanging up the washing consists of the following steps:

Let's look at the duration of each step. Altogether, the duration depends on the following variables:

Let us formalize the model a little bit. We assume that there is no item in the clothes basket which needs more than three pins to be attached.

As a result we have N = O + A + B + C in the basket.

Let t be the time required to take one item from the clothes basket and putting it on the clothes horse without attaching the clothes-pins. We therefore have to spend t for all N items in the basket.

Let p be the time required to take a clothes-pin from the bag and properly attaching it to both garment and clothesline. For A-garments we need p once, for B-garments we need 2*p and for C-garments we need three times p. Obviously, the pieces of clothing we like the most are O-garments, which need zero p.

The duration D of the entire process is then:
D = N*t + A*p + 2*B*p + 3*C*p

which is equivalent to

D = O*t + (A + 2B + 3C)*t*p

Well, this model should give you a pretty good idea of how long it will take to put the washing on the line...