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A polite, cheerful, and efficient appliance repairman just showed up (slightly early for a ten o'clock appt) and fixed our washing machine. It took him five seconds to diagnose it, and ten minutes or less to fix it. Now, all he had to do was replace the water valve, but still. I appreciate it.
Five minutes after he left, I started a load of laundry and observed that the noise the washer had been making, a sort of high-pitched buzz, had stopped. Ah, thought I. That must have been the sound of the water valve preparing to give up the ghost.
Which made me think about my relationship with laundry machines.
I didn't do laundry in my parents' house, because I am lazy and my mother is not. In college, there were the industrial coin-op machines, and likewise in my first apartment complex. But since 1997, I have lived in a series of old crumbling apartments and houses, and the washers and dryers that have come with them have existed in varying exciting states of decay and collapse. The washing machine in the original House of Geeks had a ball-bearing that was on the verge of extinction for the entire time we lived there. Washer never quit working, but it emitted a screech like a banshee when the rinse cycle ended and again when the washer stopped. Straight up through the floorboards and into the eardrum. In our abode prior to that, both washer and dryer had miniscule capacities, and you could leave the dryer running for four hours and still not necessarily have dry clothes.
What I'm saying is, I'm not used to laundry machines that work. I baked the first load of laundry I did in this house simply because I was used to having to put the dryer on maximum heat and maximum time to have any hope of getting the clothes to dry at all. And when the washer started making a peculiar noise, it didn't register as something unusual. No, what was unusual was when the peculiar noise stopped.
Laundry machines that aren't antiques. Laundry machines whose default setting is not You may need to give it a good kick.
The whole concept is mind-blowingly radical.
I think I like it.
Five minutes after he left, I started a load of laundry and observed that the noise the washer had been making, a sort of high-pitched buzz, had stopped. Ah, thought I. That must have been the sound of the water valve preparing to give up the ghost.
Which made me think about my relationship with laundry machines.
I didn't do laundry in my parents' house, because I am lazy and my mother is not. In college, there were the industrial coin-op machines, and likewise in my first apartment complex. But since 1997, I have lived in a series of old crumbling apartments and houses, and the washers and dryers that have come with them have existed in varying exciting states of decay and collapse. The washing machine in the original House of Geeks had a ball-bearing that was on the verge of extinction for the entire time we lived there. Washer never quit working, but it emitted a screech like a banshee when the rinse cycle ended and again when the washer stopped. Straight up through the floorboards and into the eardrum. In our abode prior to that, both washer and dryer had miniscule capacities, and you could leave the dryer running for four hours and still not necessarily have dry clothes.
What I'm saying is, I'm not used to laundry machines that work. I baked the first load of laundry I did in this house simply because I was used to having to put the dryer on maximum heat and maximum time to have any hope of getting the clothes to dry at all. And when the washer started making a peculiar noise, it didn't register as something unusual. No, what was unusual was when the peculiar noise stopped.
Laundry machines that aren't antiques. Laundry machines whose default setting is not You may need to give it a good kick.
The whole concept is mind-blowingly radical.
I think I like it.
