"I wanted to put laundry but it turned the machine on and vice versa" - I still do it, the unusual controls was part of my idea of overloading the player and having them struggle especially in the later levels. I was thinking about keyboard + mouse controls, or adding another different keys to pick up, put down, start machine, mouse for aiming with the clothes, and maybe I would choose to do that if I realized that "Controls" was one of the voting category. I liked though how clumsy it felt to play with only keyboard, and doing silly mistakes.
What I was also thinking when designing only 2 action buttons is "if my mom would play this she would forget about half the buttons even existed" and thinking it feels better to do the wrong thing than not remembering which button does the thing at all.