Dirty Laundry

In our house, laundry is done every day. It's the only thing besides basic personal hygiene that merits daily attention. Six people generate an amazing amount of dirty clothing.

I have been content with my Maytag top loader since it was purchased back in the Stone Age. It has served me well. Until recently.

Back in July, when we had a house full of guests, we noticed that increasingly, we would find dark spots on our clothing. At the beginning, I thought it was a burn problem with the dryer. So we changed dryers. But still the marks. Then one day, after a particularly heavy load of jeans, I noticed dark residue at the bottom of the wash tub. I ran my fingers through and sniffed.

Grease.

Sticky, thick, smelly grease. My first thought was that one of the children had something in a pocket that I'd missed. To be perfectly truthful, my track record with first instincts is not especially stellar. For instance, on September 11th, I thought that there was an issue with air traffic control. Yeah, so...

I researched the problem (what did we ever do before Google?) and learned that our transmission seal was likely failing. How hard could that possibly be to fix? Dallas, slightly panicked, suggested that it might be wiser to purchase a new machine. Well, after the expense of a wedding, Christmas on the way and feeling the pinch of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, I figured that we needed to be more like our grandparents and fix things instead of trotting down to the nearest Sears.

I took apart the inside of the washing machine, which sounds really impressive but in actuality, you lift up a thingy and expose a bolt. I wiped out the inside of the agitator which was saturated in transmission oil, cleaned and tightened the exposed bolt, replaced the thingy and ran a load. No grease spots to be found. I was feeling mighty proud of myself in spite of the fact that I got nowhere near the transmission seal. It's not like I would have known a transmission seal from a doughnut but no matter, the little voice inside my head that warns me when the sky is falling was silent. In celebration, I did a second load. And then a third. The thing is, I didn't account for the water factor. If oil was able to seep into the wash basket, logic would dictate that water was equally able to drip into the transmission.

Yeah.

Crap.

On Thursday, I ran a load of jersey sheets. Everything was normal until the agitator began to turn. The noise was magnificent. It sounded like a freight train coming to a screeching halt on a rusty track. Grinding, screaming, metal on metal. I peeked into the laundry room and since there wasn't any smoke, I let the washer do its thing because although not a particularly bright one, I am a practical woman. I could bear the racket as long as I got clean clothes.

After the second load, there was a distinct smell of hot metal in the laundry room and I finally gave in to the inevitable. We would have to purchase another washing machine or I was likely to set the house on fire. Friday, we reluctantly slogged into Sears and bought one of those front load machines. And the truth is that I'm pretty excited about it. Apparently, it cleans better while using less energy, water and detergent.

The very best feature of the new washing machine is that the controls are complicated enough that teenage daughter probably won't try to figure them out. And this way, I will no longer open the dryer to find my carefully nurtured whites in with her blue jeans.

And THAT makes me very, very happy.