Washing Away Your Money

Here I go again!

My other blog has decided to have serious log in issues (wrong email account) so I have begun this new one. It's no big deal really because there were only two posts on the other one, however I don't feel like going into introductions all over again so I'll just say "Hi" for now. You can find out about us as the blog progresses.

Now on to the post....

This last weekend was a busy one as all July fourths are. There's the yard, all 3 acres, to mow. There's the food to prepare and then there's the cleaning. Ah, yes, the cleaning. The house, the yard, the pool, the grill... well you get it, our compound is the hub of operations on most holidays.
I call it a compound because we live next door to my in-laws. No, it's not a high security kinda compound, it's a compound in the same sense as the Kennedy family compound. We have several acres separating the houses and it's this land that hosts our 4th of July picnic every year. This year it rained but not so much that we had to cancel the cooking and not so much that the fireworks were delayed.

After the weekend of fun and because I had cleaned so well before it, I had several days of no laundry. For all you folk who don't have children this is called a miracle! Then on Monday night I realized that my miracle was turning into a bathtub full of dirty clothes so on Tuesday I began the chore of washing and hanging laundry.

And that's when it happened... Right there in the middle of a load of whites the washing machine died.

I peered into the thing as it made it's awful grinding noise and knew that 12 years and four children with access to a creek had brought it to it's breaking point. Poor thing. It had worked valiantly for us and now it was gone. I spun the knob to spin and, bless the thing, it drained! I was so thrilled! No messy hoses running out the door! But alas, what was I to do? There was still laundry to be done.

It was at this moment that my husband came home.

I explained our awful plight and he went right to work. He spent the next few hours searching the internet for washers- what did we do before the internet??? After a while I checked on his progress and there they were, front loaders, on the screen.

"No honey, we don't want one of those. I've never used one of those before and they look like they'll leak all over the place."

Over the next few minutes my husband explained the why. We are starting on a new house soon. A house that will be off grid. And off grid means alternative energy and that means energy effeceint appliances. So that means front loaders.

Believe it or not but front loading washing machines use only 16 gallons of water verses the 30-40 gallons used by the traditional top loaders. And they consume less power at the same time! UNFORTUNATELY THEY COST TWICE AS MUCH. No wonder people are slow to switch to using less energy, it takes a lot more cash!

Instead of a nice $400 washing machine I just purchased a $800 one UUUGGGHHH!!!

There are a lot of other things I can think of to spend that money on... like food and gas and doctor bills... double UUUGGGHHH!!!

The man comes tomorrow to install the thing and I will get my first try at front loaders. It doesn't seem fair somehow that doing the laundry should cost so much... where is that wash board??