Buying a New Appliance

Have you ever noticed how all major appliances tend to break at the same time? This weekend, our washer decided to bite the bullet. Of course it would be BEFORE we did all of our laundry. 5 people + broken washer = a quick trip to buy a new one! Thankfully it’s supposed to be delivered today. We’re getting one of the front-loader kinds, and I picked it based on which of them was reasonably-priced and could hold as much laundry as humanly possible.

My husband gently pointed out that, just because the washer holds more does not mean less laundry. Don’t ruin my fantasy, honey. If I can do 7 loads instead of 15, I’m all over that. There is also a time-delay function, so I could theoretically program the machine to run at 3 a.m. and when I get up at 5:00, it would be ready to switch into the dryer. Now how sad is that, being excited about time delay.

It’s the little things, people.

But I found out you have to use a special high-efficiency detergent with the machine. Huh. Now why you can’t just use less detergent, I’m not sure. You’d think that would work. I am married to a rule-following engineer, however, so I’ll never know the answer to that.

I am waiting at home on my day off for this delivery. And that’s one of my pet peeves. Why in the world, in this day and age of cell phones, can’t they call us thirty minutes beforehand, and we could just leave work? But no. We’ll be there sometime between 8 a.m. and noon. This, of course, means they’ll show up at 2:30. The all-time worst for me was when the satellite repair guys were supposed to show up between 4:00-6:00 p.m. They showed up at 10:30 p.m. Yeah, there was that little issue of it being DARK outside. And the guy wanted me to initial that I was satisfied with their service. Um…just that little problem of being 6 1/2 hours late. Needless to say, I wrote a note on that one.

Now that I’m awaiting my spanking new washing machine, I’m hoping that it will be everything I dreamed of. Buying a major appliance makes you pray that it won’t be a lemon, and that somehow it will make your life easier. But there’s that little part of me that worries–should I have gotten the other brand? The one with less space for laundry but possibly a better computer? Ack. The choices!

Do any of you have a front-loader washing machine? Anything I should know about?