A washer of great fortitude

One of the BEST things about moving into this house (after living in a Boston apartment) was having a laundry room. Living in Boston on a grad school budget with a baby, I was THRILLED to have laundry "facilities" in our building. I use the term "facilities" loosely here because our laundry situation was in a basement resembling Kevin McAllister's, with almost no lighting, WHO KNOWS WHAT living down there, and was comprised of one washer and two dryers. Coin-operated, obviously. But. I didn't have to haul our stuff to a laundromat. 

Bill and Barbara got a new washer and dryer a little while before we were going to be moving to North Carolina, and they so generously saved their older ones for us. As the story goes, Bill bought this set when he was in medical school. They raised three kids on this set. These machines have washed a lot of laundry. 

We, too, have put them through their paces over the past seven years. We cloth diaper. Brad runs and generates a lot of running laundry. WE HAVE A LOT OF KIDS.

We've had a few situations where Brad has needed to dismantle the washing machine, watch a YouTube tutorial on how to fix something, fix it, and put it back together. I can think of two times he's done this prior to 2021.

Well.

This year, we reached the end of our very good run.

I won't give you a play-by-play of all the problems that arose, but the gist of it is that the motor itself (not a smaller part that could be replaced) was dying. There was no more resuscitating it. We had to face the music...and bid a fond farewell.

Brad, mid-process. He actually got it working for two different cycles during this particular week before we had to accept defeat...and then went 10 days without a washer at home.

This outer cover sat in our kitchen for a while and made a super fun playhouse.

They were all very disappointed when Brad put the cover back on. I wasn't. It was like a super weird, loud-if-bumped, non-functioning kitchen island.

We are now the proud owners of a brand new washing machine. We checked into some second-hand options first, because that is who we are at our core. But, in the end, we pulled the trigger on a new one, for a bunch of different reasons. We have been very pleased. It has a bigger capacity, which has massively changed the frequency with which I need to do laundry. I don't even know how to process that.

We are so grateful for the years of service we got from our washing machine. She came into our lives at the perfect time, and what a stellar and industrious gal she was.