Tender Mercies

First of all, I must say that I hate laundry. It was true eleven years ago, and it's still true now. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word now that my kids do their own laundry, leaving me doing the washing for only two instead of ten.  But it's still not my favorite pastime.

Anyway...

Last summer (2018), while Bruce was unemployed and we were preparing for Jason's wedding, our washing machine broke down. It just plain old would not work. Bruce looked at it, and attempted to repair it, but to no avail. We were washing-machineless. Now what?

Now what?

Well, we had to make a trip to Ephraim in July (2018) to do a fitting of Adreanna's dress—and to visit Jason, of course! While we had lunch together, we told our washing woes to Gaylynn (Adreanna's mom), and she said she'd just seen one for sale in the newspaper, in the nearby ...town? ... of Indianola. So she called the lady, and she still had the washer, and we had our big van. For $75 we could have clean clothes again. Yay!

The very nice couple in Indianola said they had just upgraded to a new machine and that this old one worked very well. So we handed over the cash, loaded the washer in the van, and headed home.

And the washer did get the clothes clean. The only problem was that every time the spin cycle ran, the machine would go for a little walk.

No.

That is much too mild a description.

Every time the spin cycle ran, the machine would turn on it's most horrible music, and have a rave party in the basement.

at the washing machine rave

It would jump and thump and bang around, only staying in the laundry room because it was tethered to the wall. There were times we couldn't open the door because the machine was in the way. (Well, that is an exaggeration. We could open the door wide enough to put an arm in and push that machine full of wet clothes back into place with all our might.) And, high on laundry detergent as it was (too many Tide Pods?), it left a black, gunky mess all over the floor every time it ran.

We tried to rehabilitate it; we did. We re-balanced the laundry inside it; we tried leveling the feet; we even tried propping it up with boards. To no avail. It ignored all we did for it; this washer was a party animal! Still, it did get the clothes clean. We just made sure to close the door every time we did laundry, so as not to be too terribly disturbed by its hoopla.

This lasted for a little over a year.

Last Saturday Carol, a new member of our ward, posted on the ward relief society facebook page that she had just upgraded her washing machine and was giving away her old one—for free—to anyone who could use it. I was a little worried on Sunday morning when I saw that her offer was twenty-two hours old. But, luckily, no one had taken her up on it yet.  !  When I replied that my machine was kind of horrible, she said we could have hers if we hauled it off.

So Bruce, Michael, and Ryan went to her house Monday morning and brought the new machine home. And just in time, too! We tried to do one more load of laundry Monday afternoon in our old washer, but it had finally partied itself to death. Yes, it was alive and kicking on Saturday, but on Monday it was gone: The pads of its feet were worn away, it had shaken some screws loose, its back panel was loose, and it could no longer accept water. In fact, it never even made another click. No more raving.

Bruce disconnects the old washer's life support.
You can see that the back is loose, and the back foot is gone.
We did find some loose screws on the floor when we moved the machine out of its spot—as if it ever had  a permanent spot.

I had to clean a huge, greasy mess from the floor when we moved the machine out. Thank goodness for Goo-Gone, scrub brushes, and cleanser!

That is what the floor looked like after I cleaned 98% of the gunk off. I did get all of it clean before the new washer went in.

Bruce, bringing the new machine home.

And now our new washing machine is installed. The first thing I did after Bruce hooked it up was to toss in the dirty rags I'd used to clean the floor, and about two cups of bleach to run a test cycle. It did its job beautifully. Clean rags, and a clean machine, sitting properly in place, just like a good, church-going washer should.

So, what are the tender mercies?

• The sudden appearance of an inexpensive and working (albeit a crazy and noisy) washing machine just when we needed it, in a place we were going to be anyway.
• That same machine kept working up until the very. day. we got a new one.
• An "ad" for a good, free washing machine that went unanswered until I saw it.
• That machine appearing on the day the current one quit working.
• It is a much nicer machine than the old one.
• And the swapping of the machines allowed me to really clean the laundry room—thus completing the Fall Cleaning before the holidays begin.

Someone must be watching out for me.