Well it’s official, our washing machine is on its way out. We were about to pay $75 for a tech to come out and look at it (even though I was 90% sure it would be too expensive to fix) but he called me and diagnosed it over the phone for free. Long story short the bearing that holds the wash bin in place is gone and it costs about $600 to fix it at which point we might as well buy another washer. Which is exactly what we are going to do. After finding a 1.5 out of 5 star rating for our existing washing machine, I decided to do my research. It turns out that the design of front load washers is inherently prone to issues due to the forward orientation of the wash bin, the high speed at which they spin to wring out the water, and the number of electronics needed to run them. They tend to last for around 10 years, whereas top loaders can last for as long as 25 or 30 while using much more water and holding less laundry. In our house we need the extra capacity so we’re sticking with a front loader.
After scouring the web, I found out that Samsung and LG have the best reputations for quality, with LG having an extremely rating and large numbers of reviews on many sites. LGs use a slightly different design called “direct drive” which does away with the belt that most front loaders use and mounts the motor directly to the wash bin which increases durability. They have a pretty comprehensive warranty as well, with the motor having 10 years and the wash bin having lifetime coverage. We had settled on a mid-range steam washer mostly because steam not only helps get stains out of clothes but also removes wrinkles and wrinkles are a big deal in our house, especially for me.
The model we want costs about $900. It’s white, and even though I’ve always wanted a red washing machine, I’m not going to pay a $100 premium for something that won’t match our dryer (which works fine and is not going anywhere). We were planning to purchase it earlier this week but we didn’t have time and that turned out to be a good thing. Starting today, our machine is discounted to $730 at all of the major retailers, most of which also free delivery and extended warranty plans. Unfortunately we’re probably going to have to shell out another $200 on a pedestal so that we don’t have to crawl on the floor to do the laundry. I absolutely hate the idea but we can’t reuse the one that we already have because our new machine isn’t the same size. Oh well, at least it won’t sound like a war in the basement during the rinse cycle.
Relatively Ambitious 