Clean Machine

A couple of weekends ago Chad and I almost/kind of/sort of made an impulse buy. This is highly unusual for us, as we generally spend entirely too long researching and shopping for every major purchase for our household. We'd sort of talked a little about getting a new washer and dryer, since our old ones were somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or so years old (which is really nothing since my mom just told me hers were like 25 years old). Ours still worked okay (thanks to Chad repairing both on multiple occasions), but the capacity was so small we were considering an upgrade. We didn't wash our comforter nearly enough since we had to go to the laundromat to do so!

Anyway, we hadn't really entertained the idea too seriously, but then Chad saw a commercial for one of Nebraska Furniture Mart's great financing deals, and we suddenly got the urge to jump in the car and go. We grabbed our trusty Consumer Reports edition that rated washers and dryers and headed out the door. Within an hour or so, we'd picked out the Consumer Report "best buy" (which happened to be a GE, in case you are wondering), haggled with the salesman to get a slightly better deal than they were offering, and headed to the pickup area to strap those babies into the bed of the truck!

Our plan was to stack the new units to free up some space in our tiny little laundry room, but once we did that we realized we needed a table on which to set the laundry basket when loading and unloading, since the dryer previously served that purpose. We were looking at Target for a small table or desk to put in that spot when Chad realized a card table already in our possession would fit there just perfectly. Since our laundry room is rarely seen by anyone except for us, we decided to save money and just let the card table do the job. Between that and the vent duct sticking out of the side it all looks a little WT, but it's functional, so I guess we'll just deal with the unsightliness for now!

It's absolutely amazing to me how much the technology of washers and dryers has changed in just the last 10 or so years. I was astounded that I don't even have to tell our new washer how big of a load I'm washing--how cool that the washer can determine that by itself! I was completely mesmerized by the new front loader and sat and watched it flip back and forth for like 20 minutes the first time I did a load. It was fascinating! I'm clearly very easily entertained. Of course it's also great that it uses so much less water and energy, and has so many more options and features!

So far we haven't really noticed that our clothes are that much cleaner, but it's extremely nice to be able to wash so many more clothes in one load! That extra-large capacity comes in handy when you need to wash the hair of three dogs off your comforter on a weekly basis! :)