Our washing machine fritzed out on us, for the third time, close to two months ago. The quote we had to get it fixed this time started at $300 just for the labour. With a new baby on the way, and already having a messy six-year-old, the final decision was to purchase a new set (ours was a stacking combo). We’d been making do with loading up the week’s dirty laundry every Saturday morning, grabbing a coffee and magazine and heading down the block to the laundromat before it got too busy and all the quarters were gone from the change machine. Imagine feeding in a $20 bill and getting twenty loonies (dollar coins) in return. It’s fucking aggravating!
Last weekend, we finally bit the bullet and dropped into our local Sears department store to pick out a new stacking washer/dryer, and, what the hell, a new blender while we’re at it. The scheduled time of delivery: the following Saturday (yesterday). That gave us a week to get rid of the old set, which sounds reasonable, non? We took the blender home the same day.
You’d think that calling up any second-hand appliance and repair shop, saying I’ve got a free stacking washer/dryer that needs some work that you guys could probably do in a couple of hours. All you need to do is come and get it would have shop managers leaping through the phone at you, showering you with accolades regarding such generosity.
Such was not the case.
After a week of No thanks, We’re not interested and WTF? (none of the charities were interested), Thursday arrived with still no plan as to how to lose the closet full of recyclable junk.
Junk? Ah ha!
I dial up 1-800 GOT JUNK’s site to get an idea of pricing and availability. Luckily for us, they’ve got an opening at the end of the day on Friday, just as we’d be getting home from work. At this point in the game, whatever their cost to haul the whole thing away is a bargain.
Friday morning, I pull the set out and disconnect the power, hoses ‘n’ such. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of looking behind a washer ‘n’ dryer that’s been stationary for at least five years in a closet. It’s fucking’ scary! By the time the GOT JUNK guys left, we’d been walking this stuff up and down the stairs and around the landing outside the ex-laundering appliance’s home.
The new set arrives early Saturday, we hook it up, check that nothing’s leaking and/or sparking and get the first load of laundry at home in the past two months muthafucking on.
But hey, why stop there? The rest of the weekend consisted of:
* vacuuming up the residuals of the old machine (as well as the rest of the place)
* relegating a bunch of junk from our Harry Potter suite (the closet under the stairs) to the building’s basement storage
* scrubbing toilets, sinks and the bathtub
* cleaning out the fridge’s contents and scrubbing it out (shudder)
* peeling off the layers of paper clumped together on the kitchen wall to re-discover our bulletin board
* rounding up a garbage bag’s worth of old clothes to donate
* rounding up a small bag’s worth of old and holey t-shirts to pitch in the bin
* cleaning out the car and take it for a wash ‘n’ vacuum
To paraphrase Henry Rollins: We didn’t just clean this weekend. We kicked dirt’s ass!
Hell, I also managed to finish off last month’s issue of The Walrus, start reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and get to the gym to burn off 1,000 calories while finally listening to some of the Boing Boing and This American Life podcasts piling up on iTunes.
How was your weekend?