Washing Machine Finally Fixed

I do our laundry on one day of the week. There are usually five or six loads. I figured we do it about every six days. I just do it all and then it is done and there is enough for each color or type of load to have a full load thereby maximizing the use of water and electricity.

Last week I had six loads lined up to wash and on the first load I realized the washing machine was not spinning. That was a Friday.

At that time I was annoyed as we have a Maytag Neptune and just before the warranty expired it broke and the entire motor was replaced. Now it is five years old and broken again. It seems things don’t last as long as they used to ‘in the old days’.

My husband phoned for service as I wanted him to decide what company to choose so if any problem happened with them I’d not have been responsible for it. He called on Friday and was given a Monday appointment. It seemed too good to be true. I made sure not to book anything for that afternoon as we had the lovely five hour window to sit and wait for the serviceman.

On Monday morning they called to say the repairman was ill and ‘called in sick’. The earliest they could do was Thursday afternoon and they said over and over that it was an evaluation only and that it may not get fixed that day if a part was needed.

My husband decided to change Service Company’s to one who has been here before for our refrigerator. However the best they could do was Wednesday, not much better.

The serviceman did come and in less than 15 minutes our washer was working again. The culprit was a broken wire and it cost $135 to fix this.

But who cares, the washer is working. We were down to the wire with no clean underwear and the kids had no clean pants. There were 12 loads now waiting to be done.

I was so grateful to have a working washing machine that I didn’t complain about doing all that laundry.

My children help me by carrying dirty laundry downstairs to the washer. They change over some of the loads to the dryer. They carry some of the clean laundry up to my bedroom where I fold it, using the bed as a big sorting platform. The kids have to put their own clothes away after I am done folding it and have it sorted into piles by type of item (one type of item goes in each drawer).

I am close to having my kids do their own folding but so far have not done that yet.

The purpose of sharing this is to show that little problems happen to everyone. We successfully homeschool our children while in the midst of stuff like this happening. No family is perfect or without inconveniences or small problems like this.

Technorati Tags: family life, parenting, washing machine.