Clean Clothes.

[agoodwinsmith]

So, the delayed delivery arrived today, now yesterday.[4]  A new washer and dryer.[1]  The washer is one of the front loading low-water machines and is quite odd.  The first thing one does, after it is set up and plugged in and blah de blah, is run a regular wash cycle without any clothes.  So I did.  It takes a freakin' hour.  The reason is that is uses a teaspoon of water and rotates the drum four times to the right, stops, rotates four times to the left, stops, rotates four times to the right, stops, rotates four times to the left - and it does this relentlessly for 20 minutes.  Then it spins like a fiend (the spinning very fast kind).  Then it use a teaspoon of water for the rinse and rotates four times to the right, stops, rotates four times to the left, stops, and does this for another 20 minutes, then it does various cha cha cha motions, another spin, and stops.  Although the door locks during operation, from the amount of water I saw used, I don't think you would actually get any of the water on the floor if you opened the door in mid slosh.  One cool thing is that the door has a window, so you can watch everything.  I did a load of sheets to see what happens when you are actually washing clothes.  It takes about 10 minutes of slosh to the right, slosh to the left, slosh to the right before the fabric becomes completely soaked with the water.  At the end of an hour, though, it is spun so dry that you only need 20 minutes to dry a complete set of queen bed sheets and pillow cases (five cases).  It really does take an hour to get it to that point, though.

They *are* very shiny and pretty, though.  :)

[1] - Really, I am woo hoo about this.  It is a fabulous gift and the machines are neato keen cool.  I'm just tired from anxiety about the delivery.  We had a super-duper power failure last night where things went blooey in the alley with a big white sizzly light and wisps of smoke like a failed magician depoof.  The blooey happened at 5:15 pm, the big truck with the meep meep meep back up noise arrived around 10:00 pm and left around 11:30 pm, and I woke up to pee at around 1:00 am and had this big spasmy flash of "oh, noes, the elevator!" where I realized that since the power wasn't back on the elevator wouldn't work, and I worried that the delivery would have to be delayed again, and I had taken a vacation day from work to be home, and our house phone wasn't working, and my cell phone had been due for recharging and so I wasn't sure I would be able to complete a call explaining what the problem was, and for goodness sake's I just about dithered myself into waking up my SOGP and shouting "ELEVATOR!" at him.  The power came back on at 2:15 am, so that was good (I plugged my cell phone in immediately in case it was going to be shortlived).  The delivery, while being scheduled for between 8:00 am and noon happened at 12:40 pm, which is fine because I dig that things happen, but which gave me pots of time to worry that maybe they had forgotten, or the machines were crushed, or that our phone was still discombobulated, or .... so I'm tired.
[2] - The delivery guys took the old machine away, too, and set up the new ones.[3]
[3] - After the experience of having half of an old combo machine conk out (no parts any more), I was determined to get separate machines so that when (or if) one or the other failed, one would only replace the dead item.
[4] - The writing of this entry started late Friday night, and ended early Saturday morning.  I know you wanted to know this.

And, I no longer have to go downstairs to use the washing machine (dryer of an old combo unit I purchased second-hand was still working[2]), so I can do laundry in the evenings after work and when I please and wearing whatever I like and whether or not I have an actual loonie.

And *that's* what I got for Christmas.    :)       

My SOGP gave me a copy of Rataoille.

I don't think rataoille is spelled correctly, but the spellchecker says nothing.  Oh well.  I trust technology - don't you? 

EDIT - oh sure, *now* it shows that rataoille should be ratatouille.  Fine.

Comments

[shriker-tam.livejournal.com]

Apart from the teaspoon of water thing that sounds like pretty much every swedish washing machine I have ever seen...

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

The ones I've used up to now (since the mid 60's at my Mom's house), had a big tub with an agitator in them. You load the clothes and the soap into the tub from the top, turn it on, and the tub fills with water - and I do mean fill - many gallons at one time. Then the agitator (a cone in the centre with three or four wings on it, attached to a motorized rod) sloshes the clothes back and forth very fast, one dash in each direction, alternating. The whole washing cycle usually takes 20 to 25 minutes. Although the spinning is fast, the clothes need an hour in the dryer.

In the late 50's, my Mom was thrilled to get a second-hand wringer-washer. Now, there was a lot of work, and it was a big improvement over the washboard and bucket she used while I was a baby. Can you imagine doing cloth diapers with a wash board and bucket? She said in the winter, in Calgary, sometimes the only way to get the diapers dry was to iron them.

Anyways. I exaggerated about the teaspoon of water, of course, but I swear it doesn't look like more than a quart (litre) - okay, maybe two.

I'm doing a heavier load this morning - some towels - and I see that it now rocks when it stops before moving on to the next rotation of the drum. I love that there is a window so I can see what it happening. :)