Saturday, May 17, 2008

Laundry Advice?









Do you have one of these?

The one on the left is a Whirlpool Duette, and the one on the right is a Samsung.

After our delicious, take-your-mind-off-your-shots dinner last night, we cruised by the appliance store to do a little research.

You see, my generous husband wants to buy us a new washer and dryer. Frankly, he's more excited about this than I am. My frugal conscience is shouting, "The old ones work just fine!" But why look a gift-horse in the mouth, right?

I think it's kind of a guy-thing... oooo, a new gadget! Plus, Mr. Architect likes the streamlined look of the front-loaders. But, more importantly, he is (probably rightfully) concerned about the Earthquake Simulation we experience every time we run the old washer.

But, hey, every cloud has a silver lining... When the boys were kind of sick, recently, I let them watch a movie - "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (Chronicles of Narnia). If you've seen the movie, it starts out with London being bombed and shortly after that shows the children traveling by train. Those two scenes just happened to coincide with the two spin cycles for the load of wash I was running. So not only was the sound turned up pretty loud, (due to Tate's hearing loss), we also got a surreal sort of you-are-there effect due to the house shaking along with the washer.

The boys thought this was Really Cool. Kerry was not so amused. So, maybe it IS time for new appliances.

I'm wondering if any of you have either of these, and what you think of them. Especially regarding how much they vibrate. We moved the laundry room upstairs when we remodeled, and I LOVE having it up here, but it is more prone to shaking. The Whirlpool claims it has "Six Point Suspension" (and rack and pinion steering?) and the Samsung advertises its "Vibration Reduction Technology". Which is better?

I don't care about all the tricky features. I don't need to steam the clothes in my dryer to de-wrinkle them when I can throw in a damp towel and get the same effect. I don't need 15 different wash cycles for expensive fabrics we don't wear. I have very simple expectations of my washing machine:

Get the clothes clean
Don't shake my house apart

So, if you have any experience with either of these, or a different recommendation, let me know!

We're definitely looking at front-loaders so we can build the folding counter over the top, and - NO - we're not going to get the Vibration Enhancing pedestal drawer.

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