Murphy’s Law

Everyone knows Murphy’s Law; “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong- at the worst possible time.” Our washing machine breaking is a good proof for the law.

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been concentrating on building a TV stand for Christy. When I work on a project I normally let my other duties, housework, laundry, dishes, yard work, automobile upkeep, etc go. With our relaxed schedule and no one visiting in this timeframe it’s no big thing.

We finally reached the point where I needed to do laundry (running out of underwear) so what happens? The washer breaks on the first load. The quantity of laundry was larger than normal because the last time I did it I missed a whole basket of clothes that we had used in New England. I thought they were clean.

Since repair would not be cost effective it is time to buy a new machine. We did that last night. The dilemma here was how much to spend. I could replace our old machine with a similar top-loader for $300-$400 or go to an energy / water-efficient front loader. Ringing in the back of my head was Karen’s blog “Move you feet” which she concluded with the desire to go out and replace her appliance with new energy efficient ones. She had just see Al Gore’s movie about global warming and was inspired. The best price on a front loader for us was in the $700-$800 range – essentially double that of the top loader. In its favor, the front loader uses 1/3 the power, 1/3 the water. It spins the clothes at 1100 rpm thus squeezing out much more water than the 450 rpm top loader and making them easier to dry (thereby saving energy and gas in our gas dryer). The front loader also does not go out of balance when spinning because the spin is in the vertical not horizontal plane. On the downside you have to use low suds, high energy detergent, which can cost 5-10 cents more per load ( so you save energy and water, but not money) negating the “it will pay for itself” argument. I really haven’t done the math here, but nickels add up. The cycle time is much longer than a top loader so the laundry task would also take longer. So, which did we get?

Karen will be pleased because we got the energy efficient machine. We don’t pick it up until Thursday, so a trip to the laundromat is likely in our future. So we have begun to do our part for the environment. Instead of sending the old unit to the landfill, I’m going to salvage what I can use from it (the pump for a water feature? The basket as a planter? Switches and timers for a future solar water heater? Who knows?).

Oh, by the way, Lowes was getting rid of some lighting yesterday morning and we bought 8 compact florescent light bulbs. Are we getting environmentally conscious or what?