Out with the old - in with the new

It finally happened. After repeated repairs, we finally decided to call it quits and bought a new washer and dryer. Front loading machines weren't even on the initial list. I understand that for short people they're a great thing, but I'm not, short, that is, and neither is hubby. Why, when you're going to put water in a container, would you put a door on the side of it? It's just stupid. A lot of people I know who have front loading machines end up with leaks, something that rarely happens with top loading machines. If you have a front loading machine and love it, great. I just don't.

Not only that, but the front loading machines need to be dried after every use, or you have to leave the door open for it to dry out naturally. If you're in a small space it just got smaller as you try to maneuver around the perpetually open door. If you don't, the machine begins to stink and the clothes you wash in it stink from the stagnant water that's been trapped in the gasket around the door. Yuck!

Our research showed that machines with agitators get clothes cleaner and that's OK because the old one had an agitator and I wanted an agitator on the new one. I can't see these little impellers in the new machines working all that efficiently, but I guess some people are happy with them.  I went for a new Maytag with an agitator, an extra water setting and a second rinse setting.

So far, it does take longer to do a load of wash but the clothes do seem to come out clean and after the last few months of having to coax the old machine to move on to the rinse cycle and having to just put things through a second wash without soap to make sure that things actually got rinsed, I'm a happy camper.

It does take longer to wash a load, but the machine has a quick wash cycle, so I'm guessing that if there's only a couple of items to wash this setting should work. Hubby uses a half capful of detergent for his "load" of a couple of tshirts and a pair of socks. I KNOW, I KNOW! He says it doesn't get clean if he uses less. He has the nose of a bloodhound and he can smell the least little thing. I brought in 1 tiny stalk of lily of the valley last spring and set it on the table downstairs. He was upstairs on the opposite side of the house and within 5 minutes he was asking me if I'd sprayed perfume! Forget hyacinths or lilacs and I love lilacs but I can't have them in the house or it drives him nuts. Consequently, he puts all of his clothes through the machine twice. Once with detergent and once with just water to get all of the detergent out. I refuse to do his laundry because I refuse to wash such a minuscule load especially with so much excess detergent.

With the old machine, that meant waiting for the machine to finish the cycle and then starting it all over again. I used the short setting of 12 minutes wash before the rinse and spin but he always used the 19 minutes plus rinse and spin. I could do a load of bedding wash and dry in an hour. His "load" of 2 tshirts and a pair of socks or a single pair of jeans took and hour to wash and half an hour to dry. If we both had to do laundry at the same time, I tried to get mine in first so that my load was done and in the dryer before he got started. Otherwise it'd be and hour for the first load and another hour for his jeans before the machine was free to do my 20 minute load.

We were concerned that the newer machines don't really use enough water to really get clothes clean, but this machine has an extra water setting that puts in more water to start with which seems to work really well. I washed 3 regular pillows the other day (I think it's a 7 cubic foot tub) and it took all 3 and sloshed them around until they were right at the top of the tub and full of water. Since the machine has an extra rinse setting we don't have to run down and start it all over again. So all in all, even though a cycle takes longer, with the extra rinse and not having to start the whole thing a second time, It actually takes about the same amount of time for hubby to do a "load".

Last week his sniffer didn't like his sheets so I pulled another set out of the cupboard and changed them, but no, they didn't smell fresh to him either and he was persuaded that the sheets had absorbed the smell from the vacuum cleaner stored in that cupboard. So I switched them for a set from another cupboard. Nope, not fresh enough. So I switched the pillowcases and that was okay enough for him to sleep through the night. The next day I went out and bought more sheets to fit the bed and did load after load of bedding and the pillows, (I bought a new one of those too) until everything was clean enough to pass the sniff test.

It's funny, the bedding and towels which I do with regular amounts of detergent and a single cycle are clean enough to pass his nose test, but he's persuaded that things aren't clean unless he uses 4 times the recommended amount of detergent when he does laundry... In all fairness he sometimes has oil and grease on his clothes from working on the car, or tree sap and stain from woodworking which does take a little more washing. At least he isn't using a capful any more. I think I may have persuaded him that it's OK to use the quantity recommended by the manufacturer. I hope so, or my new machine may end up throwing a hissy fit at all the excess detergent.

I've only had the machine for a couple of weeks and other than taking longer to do a load, so far I like it. Here's keeping my fingers crossed.