To enable drying in a short time which hardly causes any wrinkles by intermittently driving a pulsator at the time of drying to agitate laundry, lengthening pulsator driving time in a unit of time according to the progress of the drying, and gradually increasing the number of agitation of the laundry in a unit of time.

In a washing process, a clutch 15 is disengaged, and a pulsator 12 is rotated by a drive motor 14 via a decelerating mechanism 11 to wash and rinse laundry in a washing drum 7. At the time of proceeding with a hydroextracting process, a drain valve 26 is opened, and the clutch 15 is connected to rotate the washing drum 7 by the rotation of the drive motor 14. In a drying process after that, the clutch 15 is disengaged again, and a drying device 19 formed of a heater 20 and an air blower 21 is activated to blow warm air into the washing drum 7 as the pulsator 12 is intermittently rotated. At this time, with the progress of the drying operation, pulsator driving time in a unit of time is lengthened to increase the number of agitation of the laundry in a unit of time gradually.