The Curse of Three

Well, it's been a trying week.

On Sunday morning, Middle Child was complaining that the A/C was not working upstairs. We (fortunately!) have two separate units for the upstairs and downstairs. This was a refreshing change from our last house, where even setting the thermostat to 65 degrees did not cool down the upstairs. In early June, the same unit didn't seem to be working, so I called my HVAC guy. He said either a mouse or a chipmunk had chewed through some wiring. A fixable solution, though still cost a pretty penny, because these folks seem to earn about $200/hour.

I was really hoping it was just Chippy at work again. Nope. This time it was leaking freon. Either we could spend hundreds of dollars each year replacing the freon, or get a new unit. Since it was original with the house, I suppose it was time. Wait Time for New One: 9 days.

Later that same day, I went down to our basement freezer to get some bread. As I'm walking back upstairs, I realize the bread doesn't seem all that hard, for frozen bread. Do a reverse turn and find some very soft ice cream (always the first to go!) Fortunately, the meat was still frozen solid, so we began the process of emptying out the freezer and trying to cram as much as possible in our fridge/freezer upstairs. Only had to throw away a minimal amount of food, so that was the good news. Immediately headed to Lowes to buy a replacement. We had no idea how old the freezer was, as the previous owners had left it without a manual, etc. Probably older than 15 years. Wait Time for New One: 10 days.

Two days ago, I'm doing laundry and hear the warning beep. I am familiar with this sound, as it happened two years ago. The dreaded 'te' error code on my LG front load high efficiency washer. Again, the previous owners had left the matching washer/dryer combo here, but it was a relatively new machine at the time (2010 model). I had it repaired, to a tune of $215. I was not happy about it, as I actually HATE this washer. As with all front loaders, it has black mold all around the gasket/seal area and smells awful (no matter how many times you clean it or leave the door open). Plus, it sucks at cleaning clothes. If you have anything that's actually dirty (mud, food stains, etc.) you will need to run it through about three cycles, even after applying stain removal products. I also learned that 'high efficiency' washer/dryer combo = 3 hours per load of laundry. Now, that's efficiency!

I told my husband I wasn't willing to put another $200 into this washer, and I wanted to go back to an old fashioned machine like I left at our old house. My 1986 Maytag lasted us 24 years and I only replaced it because it was becoming noisy. Bought a 2010 Maytag to replace it and was sad to leave it behind when we moved a few years later.

We headed back to Lowes and here's what's being delivered (Wait Time: 8 days):

That looks like this inside:

Keeping the dryer, but I look at this as saving a number of hours of wait time per week while doing laundry!