Dirty laundry

It was just after lunch and I was pacing from window to window like a nervous school girl awaiting her first date. Finally it came into view, lumbering down our street, the truck from our local appliance store. It stopped hesitantly in front of our house which started the dogs barking and Phillip jumping up and down shouting "they're here, they're here!".

We had entered our local appliance store on Saturday morning filled with anticipation at the prospect of purchasing a new washer and dryer. Our old ones had come with the house, and had no doubt been purchased by the previous owners when they had the house built in 1987. They had served us well for the past eight years, but we were beginning to feel that they were running on borrowed time. With the promise of a modest bonus on the horizon for Rob we decided to be proactive and make the purchase before our current machines died. We chose to patronize our local appliance store instead of a "big box" store for a few reasons. First and foremost, our local store delivers, sets up the new appliances, and takes the old ones away, all for free. Second, the guy who runs the store is a local guy who has been doing this his whole life. He is a wealth of knowledge, has used most of the products that he sells at one time or another, and is not afraid to give you all the information on any given product, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finally, the thought of going to a big store with three children and trying to make an informed decision on a fairly major purchase was less than appealing. Yes, local is good.

My criteria for the new appliances were fairly simple. I wanted a washer that would not suck our clothes under the agitator leaving them with streaks of grease on them, and a dryer that would dry our clothes in less than three sixty minute cycles. We had done a little bit of research on our own, and the thought of a front loading washer was somewhat appealing, primarily due to the absence of an agitator. Mark, the appliance guy, listed off six to eight things about a front loading washer that in his opinion made them superior to a top loader. When he was finished we asked him about the other side of the coin, surely there were drawbacks. He could only provide us with one, "front loaders tend to be more expensive than top loaders". Given the list of good things he had just told us about front loaders we refused to be scared off on price alone. He led us to a very nice looking GE washer and dryer pair, and told us that those were his favorites at the moment. He said that GE was the last to enter the front loading washer market, so they learned a lot from the mistakes of their competitors. Beside this pair was a very impressive GE upright washer with its matching dryer. He said that machine had been marketed by GE as the "top loader that thinks it's a front loader" due to its lack of an agitator (but did I really want an appliance that suffers from schizophrenia?). This impressive duo was linked together by what he referred to as an "umbilical cord", so that the dryer would know what was in the washer, how much moisture was left in the load, and when to expect the clothes, so that it could "prepare" for the incoming load. I was more than a little intimidated at the thought of my dryer sitting in the basement, patiently tapping its perfectly balanced foot, waiting for me to descend the stairs and move the laundry into it from the washer so that it could go about its business. I had visions of it calling upstairs to me "Hey lady, this load of wash has been sitting here for four hours waiting to be put into me so I can dry it. If I could move it myself I would, but I can't, so shake a leg, would ya?". I mentally crossed the schizophrenic washer and too-smart-for-its-own-good dryer off my list of possibilities.

In the end we decided on the GE front loader and matching dryer that Mark recommended. GE has a very nice policy about returning any appliance within thirty days for any reason with no charge and a full refund, so if we decide we don't like this pair P Appliance will pick them up and we can start over. I did my first load of laundry last night, and so far so good. The washer appeared to know that it was a front loader, there was no sign of a split personality. And the dryer, while clearly intelligent (it has a setting where you can tell it to stop when it senses the load is dry instead of just setting it for a specific amount of time), does not appear to have the unsettling ability to judge me or my tardiness in moving the load from one machine to the next. (Although I will admit last night I was riveted to the washer as I watched the estimated minutes remaining count down on the aesthetically pleasing digital display. No sooner did the stainless steel drum stop spinning and the door unlock then I was moving the contents to the dryer.) Somewhere deep inside me is the shadow of my sixteen year old self, no doubt weeping at the thought of me being so giddy over a new washer and dryer...