My wife insists on hand washing the baby clothes. In so doing the water level in the Chao Phraya gets lowered every time due to her excessive water consumption. My apologies to the boat people who have run aground because of this.

I say machine wash is just fine and just as clean and tell her, "Look at all the time you'll save my dear."

The goat of a mother in law has planted this in her mind and I cannot convince my darling wife otherwise.

Any thoughts, experiences, scientific data or goat assassins someone wouldn't mind sharing to help save the Chao Phraya and the whales from my water hoarding wife?

She may be concerned about the detergents being used in which case most leading manufacturers have a baby or 'sensitive' product for babies. She should keep the babies things separate but that shouldn't prevent her from using a washing machine. But of a strange one that, just her old-fashioned mum in charge it sounds like.