The washing machine’s last words
March 06, 2009 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, budgets, housekeeping, humor
We got it as soon as my husband left graduate school. What a luxury to wash diapers in my own apartment (and later, house) instead of hauling the stinky things to the grad apts. laundry room! (we couldn’t afford disposables.) We’ve had the thing for 18 years and have moved it five times. Recently it started to leak. Fortunately it sits on a cement floor that slopes away from the rest of the house, so the only damage has been peeling paint. Last week I took the photo above to prove that there were cheap and ingenious solutions to leaking washing machines (3 large sponges strategically placed — Ta Da!) which were a lot cheaper than buying a new washing machine.
Particularly when it’s a lot more fun to buy new rugs for all the rooms you’re rearranging. Even if you’re *not* shopping local. Even if you spend *all* of your recent freelancing income on them and then some. But look at this one!
Just $15 on Ebay, and it’s a vintage hand-made wool braided rug, a REAL one made of fabric, not yarn, and did I mention it was just $15? (plus $20 for shipping)?? Others like it cost $100 and up.
But I digress.
The sponges did little to stem the growing river of water that flowed from my washer during every wash. Nor did the $172 spent on a plumber who reamed out the drain lines. Yesterday the machine gushed its last, filling the house with the smell of electronic death before going kaput. Its final words to me were these:
You shouldn’t have bought QUITE so many rugs.
You need a bigger emergency fund.
You probably should have cleaned and otherwise maintained me better.
You will never, ever, EVER get away from the unending toil and irritation of the Laundry in your life.
You know what? That washing machine always was a bitch.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Purchasing suggestions from anyone who has bought a washing machine since the Reagan administration?
March 6th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Even though your machine had its last words to you, which I would not take too seriously, I cuss and swear at mine every single day, sometimes more than once. The drum is too small, the dryer is too slow (it is a stackable) and it becomes off balance when even one towel is placed in it. Do I have to take my towels to the laundry mat? Or put up with the entire machine jumping around the whole house in an angry manner? The only real solution is to buy a new house with a mac daddy laundry room. That is my dream…a room for the the laundry to call its on. It might even live there instead of the closet. But in this economy, one can only dream. And you are the lucky one, to get one step closer to the mac daddy washing machine. Can I come visit it and maybe do my towels?
March 6th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Hey, a whole new HOUSE?!? Now *there’s* an idea! Thanks for commenting, Leah! Shore, you can come visit any time. And bring your towels.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
My daughter says my wife’s hobby is laundry. My wife complains about it but from my point of view she drags it out, load by load, all over the house I might add. Me I can do a heck of a lot of laundry in just a few BIG loads. My wife (a teacher) maintained a blog last summer for a very short time: mealmaker.blogspot.com. You might find her recipe for homemade detergent interesting. It works great.
I have become quite good at fixing my washer and dryer, and I was going to suggest that the water was coming from the drain, but alas you had bigger trouble.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I have 4 braided rugs, of varying sizes but one quite large, my grandma made which are still in use. I treasure them.
March 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
@Wordnut: Hmm. Family negotiations about such things get very complicated, and I can only say how we’ve handled things at the Almostgotit house. The piece of paper you can see taped to the top of my ex-washer contains detailed instructions on how to do laundry. My children now do their own, as did my husband until we recently traded around some other chores. I wonder why you don’t do your family’s laundry. Did you tend to turn all the underwear pink with your giant loads? Just wondering.
@Bill:A good braided rug will last for generations, and are a treasure indeed.
.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
The laundry machine will be sorry when it sees your new shiny laundry machine come to take its place. Then it will be all like “I didn’t mean to leak all over” and “It’s okay I’ll wash your rugs for you” but you’ll be all like, “Sorry, to the curb with you”, and then the old machine will go on television and cry about how it used to have a nice home and job and now it’s on the street with no work and no prospects and the TV host will blame the economy and then the job offers will pour in and the old laundry machine will end up with a mansion in Bel-Air where it will have lots of other low-paid washing machines from like Thailand doing all the actual washing while it sits beside the pool sipping mai-tais. Life is so unfair.
March 7th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
@ Dennis: you have just now caused me to make strange noises that alarmed my dog very much. What kind of a Pro-Canine Viszla are you, anyway?
March 7th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Time to go shopping…
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8260204&type=product&id=1170289357367
March 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Nah, my laundry comes out fine most of the time but I’ve transgressed in other areas such as including bras in the dryer and getting them all twisted. Never had much use for those things.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
@Wordnut: Argh! No! Bras! In! The Dryer!!!
@TR: Thanks for the tip. I was also given secret access to the 2009 Consumer Reports Buying Guide and just have to decide whether to spend $500 or $900… (amortized over 18 years, doncha know…)
March 8th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Nagging appliances? No wonder we all hate doing housework.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
[...] Good News: Almostgotit bought a new washing machine!! [...]
October 7th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
[...] our washing machine went out last spring, we replaced it as soon as we could. When SEVERAL of our dishwashers died in rapid [...]