A long time ago it became very clear that remembering to move the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer and then to get it out of the dryer once it was dry was simply not a function that our brains felt was nescesary to master. As such we often let our laundry lanquish in the basement for far longer than one ought to.
Enter the laundry monitor. So far just an idea and a USB joypad but one day. See the idea is that since we are rarely away from our technology (computer, cellphone, regular phones, etc...) there really ought to be some way for our laundry to reach out and smack us when we've forgotten about it. Since we are the proud owners of some near indestructible laundering devices with mechanical controls we came up with the idea of using simple contact switches to read the state of the machine and the magic dial rotates around from start to finish. By tying these back to a computer we could have the system send us a message (email, phone - VoIP has its benefits, or large flashing lights and sirens). This way we might actually remember to get our laundry before we get to the "Hey where did all the clothes go?" stage. Now we just need to find the time to put it all together and make it happen.