Day 325 - November 21

The downside of having really cheap stuff stockpiled is that when you get a washer that needs special detergent, you have a years supply of regular stuff sitting in the laundry room.  We tried to gift them to Sarah but she forgot to take them. :)  So on Thursday when we show up with our pumpkin swirl cheesecake for Turkey Day, we will also have a big box of Tide to pass out as party favors.  :)

Day 324 - November 20

They're here!  And they work! We were going to wait out the year because our home warranty would cover any problems until March.  However - with the leaks of the Black Friday ads and then the competitive sales earlier in the month to beat Black Friday, we decided to go for it.  We called my parents and had them give us the Consumer Report best buys, did some online research, and compared prices and models at 3 stores.
Best Buy - Their sales were all on pairs only.  A lot of the pairs had one highly rated machine and one that didn't perform so well.  We don't care if our set matches in that way - we just want them both to work.  It was going to be expensive to mix and match.

Sears - Do their appliance people work on commission?  They asked if they could help us and we said we were just browsing.  One guy stalked us the whole time and kept interjecting into our conversations.  Then when a woman talked to us, that guy was making under his breath comments at her until she snapped "I get it - they're yours."  We left shortly thereafter.  If their prices had been a zillion times better than the other options, we would have sucked it up and bought them there, but other stores were competitive so we didn't feel the need to put up with the crap.


Home Depot - They had a good set (sold seperately, but we did wind up getting the set) for a good price.  The salespeople asked us if they could help and when we told them we were still researching, they left us alone.  That did happen with 3 different people, however, they all left us alone after asking.  (There were big "We don't work on commission" signs up too.)  Eventually, we narrowed it down to 2 sets and decided to ask some questions.  We were also simultaneously searching for information online.  What did the world do before smartphones?

Eventually we wound up with these.  The LG steam washer and dryer.  Their reviews are very good, so hopefully they live up to the hype.  We got them at a great, great price. They are going to be $50 cheaper on Black Friday, but we didn't have to stand in line to get them. :)

Day 323 - November 19

I'm currently washing my last thing in our old washer and dryer.  The washer is at least a decade newer than the dryer (if not more than that), but it has issues with filling and then not running.  It doesn't happen on a regular enough basis to call a repair guy (or use our home warranty) and we can' figure out what triggers the problem.  The dryer is just awful.*

*Even though the machines aren't great - the whole reason I'm using them tonight is to shrink a new sweatshirt before we get the good ones.  Sometimes it's good to have the ability to shrink stuff! ;)

Day 101 - April 11

 21.  That's how many loads of laundry it took to de-smoke-ify our wardrobe & linen closet after leaving the smoking den apartment.  Luckily our new place has a bigger washer & dryer, because it would have been more like 30 loads at the other place!  This is the last 2 loads from today.  Now that they're clean I can put them into my awesome closet.  The good thing is that I can organize by size & season since I'm doing it little by little.  My next door neighbor & I had a conversation about our closets today.  We don't understand why the builder made them big & left out a 4th bedroom.  Funny to see what matters to builders at different points of time throughout history.