Just before before we left for Florida last fall, our washer died. To bring you up to date, here’s a link to my “Drip Dry” blog post from Thursday, September 30th (we left early Saturday).

When it died, it was because our washer full of dirty clothes, wouldn’t spin out. We had a tub full of wet, dirty clothes. We ended up drying the still dirty clothes and taking some of them to Florida with us where we washed them and brought them back with us last week. But since arriving home, the remaining dirty clothes from the load last fall, plus our travel clothes and the stuff we’ve soiled since arriving, have been piling up. It was obvious, we HAD to get a replacement washer and it was time to replace the dryer too. (After forty years we doubted we could them to still come under warranty.)

Last week was spent shopping for a new pair of laundry appliances. I can’t begin to tabulate the time looking on line and in stores. (I figure about five hours each day for about three days.) We gravitated toward two flashy, sparkling, high end units: the LG Wave or Maytag Bravos. Wow they were pretty! Either pair was a marvel of beauty and energy efficient engineering. The Maytag pair had a SALE PRICE of about $1,600 and the LG about $1,900. There were so many features that you couldn’t remember what each appliance would do. (Did they put the clothes on hangers, and put them in drawers or was that left to you?) And everything was pre-programmed. If you remembered you wanted to wash another pair of socks, the water would have to drain out so you could “start over”. A load of clothes could take two plus hours to wash. It was mind-boggling. We wanted the best, but the best seemed to be too restrictive.

Friday we were so tired of shopping that I made a vow: “We would get a washer and dryer before ending our day and going home.”

We got more and more confused as we reviewed the features and explanations of those “best” units.

Finally we went back to ABC Warehouse and picked out the simpliest of the High Efficient units, a Whirlpool. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles, but more of the controls were left to the user (instead of totally automatic). It’s highly energy efficient and even qualifies for a rebate from Consumers, but it has no extra hot water header to sterilize the clothes by using super hot water. There’s no steam in the dryer. Just a plan-jane but very serviceable pair of appliances. The price was half what we would have spent on the LG Wave.

The delivery will be Tuesday. We can’t say now if we were right getting the simple units, but in the end, we figured anything will work better than our forty year old pair which we’re replacing. And we can always get the super-dooper pair for Florida where we’ll probably use it more than here. Afterall here, we will only a grand total of four and a half months out of the year.