Good morning all you people out in digital land… I am slowly attempting to wake up. Last night I crashed around 8:30, that was the point at which I just could not go on any more. I slept like crap the night before last, and spent all day yesterday dealing with various things around the house… so by that time I was just falling asleep in my chair. Here is hoping that a combination of coffee and writing will rouse me from my mental slumber.
Towel Trick
Yesterday was pretty much a continuation of damage control for our little flood that happened Sunday evening. I stayed home from work in the hopes of having someone come out to repair the washing machine… or at least advise us that it was kaput. One of my wife’s friends had given us a phone number of a repair lady that she had used in the past, so at 8:00 am on the dot I left a rather detailed message. At this point I went about doing as much damage control as I thought I could.
Previously we had used essentially every towel we had in the house to soak up the water and attempt to prevent additional damage. As a result we had a massive heap of soaked towels. I took them out Sunday evening and placed them laid out on the concrete around the pool in the backyard. My thinking was that the heat of the concrete combined with the wicking effect would suck he water right out. My theory may or may not have worked… but at some point the neighbor boy that mows our lawn came through and… rather thoughtfully picked up all the towels before mowing. However this means he deposited them stacked in a heap on one of our lawn chairs.
So of course as I came out yesterday morning they were all still soaked, but thankfully not moldy yet. First order of business was to lay them out as flat as I could… but this time I decided just to drape them over every piece of lawn furniture we had. By noon the majority were fully dry, and the last few were just mildly damp. So I dumped the remaining ones in the dryer for a few minutes to finish drying them. Yes I realize the absurdity of drying essentially dirty towels… but my whole idea here was to try and keep them from molding while we were down a washing machine.
Fishing for Pants
One of the big problems ahead of me… was the fact that the load we were washing was still sitting in the stagnating pool of gain infused water in the washing machine. I had to find a way to get these out and dried so I pulled the wicker basket we keep in the bottom of the closet as a clothes hamper and lined it with trash bags. Then I began the process of fishing for pants. The water had turned a dark murky color in the hours since the breakdown… and quite honestly finding the clothing was a bit of a challenge. But with perseverance I dumped each and every soaking garment into the bag lined basket.
I hauled the mess out into the backyard and proceeded to wring out each of the garments all the while not getting the mess of water on myself in the process. This turned out to be a bit more of a juggling act than I had planned… and at this point I am pretty sure that my hands will permanently smell of Gain detergent… but I guess there could be far worse things to have infused into your skin. It was a bit like playing Tetris with wet clothing trying to figure out a place to have each hanging by itself without overlapping. I thought briefly about going to the store and buying a couple of hooks and a clothes line… but we really did not have a good place to string one up. That might be something we need to remedy.
Sunday night we had a wet/dry vacuum that a neighbor had brought down, but when we were finished extracting the liquid from the carpet, he took it back down to his house. So there I was, with a bunch of Gain smelling murk in a dead washing machine that I really needed to extract. I roamed around the kitchen and found a pitcher that we don’t really use… and that combined with a Rib Crib cup served as my vessel for bailing out the washing machine. This was an annoyingly tedious process and I essentially extracted roughly 3-4 gallons of liquid from the machine. I finally got it down to just a little bit in the bottom… at which point I employed a bunch of dollar store knock off “sham-wows” we had laying around.
Spending Money
That did the trick and the washing machine is essentially as dry as I can possibly get it. Essentially at this point I had given up hope on the machine repair lady coming out and making this a simple task. After talking to my father… his theory was that the pump motor had seized up since that is what happened to their last washing machine. I was fine with this theory… and it generally meant that I needed to pick up another washing machine. The same neighbor that brought down the vacuum works at Lowes, so I decided it was time to go visit him. My ultimate hope was that they could have something delivered that day… albeit a grossly unrealistic hope.
Essentially they were running a special this week on a Roper Washer and Dryer pair, for $299 a piece. Roper is a sub brand of Whirlpool and is essentially more than likely manufactured here in Tulsa at the Whirlpool plant. We have had a Roper refrigerator for 15 years and counting… so it is a brand that I am very familiar with. Essentially it is a no bells or whistles functional machine, and that was perfectly fine for me. My niece inherited the Roper washing machine that my wife’s sister had and it is still going strong. So I decided to go ahead and just pick up a new washer, in hopes of having to delivered and installed quickly.
My basic theory was this… if a new unit is roughly $350 after you pick up the hookups… it would cost me at least $100 to have someone come out and look at my current washer. So do I throw money at a seven year old admittedly bargain basement washing machine… or do I just save that hassle and buy a new one. The earliest they could have one delivered was Wednesday afternoon, so I latched onto that before that day filled up. So on top of wasting all yesterday messing with “the flood”, I am going to also have to take on Wednesday afternoon. Quite honestly at this point I just want it done so we can go on about our lives.
Television Recycling
Since the day was already shot… and I was too hot and grumpy to go back to work at this point and play nice with the people that want me to do stupid things. I decided just to make the day into a “whatever needed to get done” day. For a few weeks I had been hauling around in the back of my jeep a load of clothing intended to go to Goodwill. Since I am down 55 lbs and my wife is down roughly 40 lbs… we had a lot of clothing we could no longer wear. So like always we go through a mad cleaning frenzy and bag it all up with the intent of donating it to Goodwill. The problem is… I didn’t actually take it to Goodwill that weekend and as a result I have had eight bags of miscellaneous clothing in the back of my jeep for almost a month.
The main reason why I had not taken it yet was the fact that we also had a 27” CRT television. So I packaged I went through the house gathering any additional donate-ables and cleared room in the pile that had shifted greatly for the television. I get to the donation center… and start unloading everything… and the nice man working there informs me that they cannot accept CRT Televisions. I guess when the HDTV switch happened… they were absolutely flooding with them… and quite frankly they do not sell in any of the centers. It makes sense but was not something I thought about ahead of time. Hell we used it as our bedroom television until recently when we went through the cable upgrade.
What was awesome of him however… is that he told me Best Buy would take the television and recycle it. So I finished unloading everything into his bin, got a donation receipt and headed over to our local Best Buy. Supposedly they were giving 50 Best Buy points for people turning in their old televisions… which is next to worthless in their rewards pyramid scheme. So I went inside and inquired at the front desk where I should bring my television. They pointed to a corner up at the front of the store… so I hauled it in and set it down in the approved cubby. I guess I could have asked for my points bounty, but at this point I was hot and tired and could give zero shits. Finally I was able to go home and chill out for a bit.
Wrapping Up
I’ve rattled on enough for one day… but this essentially covers the bulk of my “day off” from work. Looking forward to having this entire mess past me. Wednesday they will deliver and hook up the new washer, and once that is done I will start the laundrypalooza of trying to catch up and wash all the crap that got stranded in the process. I have it all neatly packed in a few empty steralite boxes… which admittedly it felt a little silly to be folding and storing dirty laundry. Anyways… I hope you all have a great day, and that your week has been going better than mine.