No li’l squirt, this power washer from Karcher’s award-winning K3 series sprays a potent 1700-PSI torrent of foamy righteous. Let the waters gush over your household, and cleanse it! But don’t point this sucker at another person—unless you intend to

On the thickest anthology of ecumenical scriptures you can find, I swear this is true: I was in South Florida a few months ago, and happened to see a fifty-year-old man out in front of his house in the middle of the day, plainly visible from the street, hosing his driveway down, dressed only in white cotton briefs and a sleeveless undershirt.

It wasn’t for vanity that he was so scantily attired. Maybe it was the heat. He was as chubby as a snowman, with approximately the same complexion. The tighty-whities looked as if they’d long since passed the age at which undergarments are eligible for retirement and now, no longer all that tight or white, were too old even to really enjoy the benefits of seniority on the job. The undershirt, stretched as taut as a sausage casing, made me think “Kowalski”—not Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, but Kowalski the deli meat company.

How does this happen? I asked myself. Here’s a man so bereft of personal pride in his physical appearance that he’s out in public dressed only in his unmentionables—and yet his pride of homeownership is strong enough that he washes his driveway.

The more I thought about him over the course of that day and the days to come, the more my bewilderment gave way to a kind of admiration. I started to want what that guy has: A disregard for other people’s opinions, an idiosyncratic but sincere set of values, a place of my own, and the compulsive need to keep it ship-shape.

But I’ve decided I’m going to go about it a little differently. I’m not going to settle for washing my driveway, deck, sidewalk and siding with a common garden hose. I’m going to get myself the Karcher 1700 psi Electric Pressure Washer.

With two spray wands and an onboard detergent tank, this pressure washer will help me keep my homestead gleaming like the day construction was finished. For tough jobs, I’ll attach the included DirtBlaster® Spray Wand and blast dirt and oil into oblivion. For somewhat gentler cleaning, I’ll use the included Vario Power Spray Wand, and adjust the pressure by hand.

Its ergonomic design will be easy to maneuver, and I’ll even be able to draw water from a standing source, so I can wash things that a hose can’t reach. Yeah, I’ll take that pudgy, nearly-naked Floridian’s game to a whole new level.

Oh, and instead of white cotton briefs and an undershirt, I think I’ll do my power-washing in fishnet stockings, garters and a fire-engine red bustier. ‘Cause I gotta be me, you know?

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