Appliances

We finally are coming to grips with our appliances. For reasons that would take too long to explain (and would be somewhat embarrassing for the household electrician), we've been without our upstairs stove for several months. I just resolved that problem Friday night.

But before I fixed the stove, which we could wait on because we have another one downstairs (the basement was set up as a separate living space), we had to deal with a broken washer and dryer (a laundry center, all one unit). That was harder to do without; there was the local laundromat, of course, but that is expensive, and frankly where we live nothing is truly close by. I tried to fix the unit—I've done it before—but the part I needed would have cost a couple hundred dollars, and the inside of the washer was very rusty, and the springs were weak, so we had to give up on repairing and go straight to buying.

It was a hard decision, especially because I replaced the heating element in the dryer section less than a year ago. But the old laundry center wouldn’t have held up much longer. So we have a new one. Not what we wanted for Christmas, exactly, but it does work well, and now we can catch up on all the laundry we’ve been putting off.

Now I just have to get started on the dishwasher. Don’t even ask.