Monday, April 24, 2006

Who Would've Thunk I'd be Happy to do Laundry?

I should be sleeping, but thanks to low blood sugar, I'm not (ah, the joys of diabetes). Since I have a pretty busy day ahead of me, I'm going to get today's posting done now and get that much further ahead. Man, what a day I had yesterday!

Since we moved here in January, I've been doing my laundry at a local laundromat. Laundromats cost a lot of money and take a pretty big chunk of time out of your day (not to mention the oogie factor of washing your clothes in the same machine that someone else just washed their underwear and who knows what else in, but I do my best not to think about that). Therefore, I've worked pretty hard trying to get us laundry capability here at the rental, only to be thwarted time and again.

See, there was a washer and dryer here when we moved in. However, they were both so old that I'm pretty sure Moses washed his tunic in them. They were just disgusting. And since I have a pretty high oogie factor, I vetoed them before we even moved in. Instead, I put out an ad at The Big Company employee classifieds for a free or cheap washer and electric dryer. Fifty dollars later, we were in business. Since Champs has a cargo van for work, we were able to easily pick them up and store them in our garage for the move. Sounds great, right?

Not so much.

It took a couple of weeks after we moved for Champs to find the time to get everything settled in the basement after moving to get the machines swapped out with the disgusting ones. Since more than half of our stuff is boxed and stored in the basement and we had something like 10 guys helping us move, the boxes were everywhere down there. Once the basement was cleaned up and Champs went to get the machines in, he found that there was a problem with the dryer. It was electric, but the house is not wired for 120 amps. Auugh! After deciding that the ancient dryer wasn't as nasty as the ancient washer, he put that one back in. So there were two dryers in our basement. Sigh.

Right away we realized we had another problem: the floor under the washer had a serious slope and the washer was so out of balance it did a dance of distress just agitating the clothes, never mind actually spinning. We tried everything to even it out and level it, but nothing was working, so we had to let it go for awhile. Sigh again.

Then I tried the ancient dryer. It took (and I am not kidding) 2 hours to dry a small load! Darn and sigh!

OK, so some time passed and lots of laundry was done at the Laundromat (Oogie). Then one day at work I saw an ad for a free gas dryer. Lo and behold, a guy at work had a 7 year-old dryer that works great; all he wanted was for it to be hauled away. Champs gladly went and got it and soon I had one wonderful Whirlpool dryer with 7 cycles and the promise of faster clothes drying. By this time, Champs had also figured out that one of the leveler feet was missing on the wash machine and got a replacement at Home Depot. I was so close to doing laundry in my own home that I could smell the Downy!

Problem: the gas connection leaked. And the venting tube was broken. Here I was, with three dryers in my basement and no clothes getting dry! Darn, darn and sigh!

Well, we got the gas thing looked at and figured out what was wrong so Champs could fix it. Then yesterday Champs was able to get the washing machine leveled and the dryer drying safely! (!!!!!!!!!!!) Four months and two days after we moved in, I got my laundry facilities back and I couldn't have been happier. I did 10 loads of laundry yesterday; all the regular stuff plus all of our summer clothes that I pulled out of storage. I think I kissed Champs about a million times through the day and thanked him repeatedly. I love my man!

I also cleaned out our coat closet, washed the cat-box and the cat, stored away our winter clothes, cleaned the house and packed four boxes of knick-knacks and baskets away in anticipation of moving in August (and Champs worked like mad, too; the yard looks fantastic). All in all, I worked my tail off but Oh, did it feel good to get it all done and to be able to do the laundry again! I do love the smell of Downy in the afternoon....

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