One way the laundry metaphors resonated was the cyclical nature of both washing and engagement. As we said in our paper:

Washing is repetitive work that needs to be done regularly: we do not wash our clothes so that they will never become dirty again. Rather, washing is a recurring part of daily life. We have developed machines, detergents and routines to make it less time-consuming and more effective, but the reproductive nature of washing is clear. …it became clear to us that the EI could also be perceived as a collective doing of reproductive household work. Public engagement, like washing, is not something academics can just do once and then walk away from, but rather it needs to keep being done, as part of maintaining and developing the relationship between science and society through changing times and cultures. This is also true of engagement about PES ideas. These are not concepts that can just be written up once, or taught, with an expectation that the ideas will be easily understood and adopted. Rather, they need to be re-considered, re-conceptualised, continually re-engaged with: re-designed (in the sense Latour [2008] uses the term).

(Bailey, et al, 2021, p.20)