My lifelong philosophy regarding the purchase of household appliances has been to seek out the most basic Sears Kenmore model capable of doing the job at hand, whatever the job. Last week, our Kenmore washing machine stopped spinning after ONLY 22 years of faithful, trouble-free service. I gave it a decent funeral (gently placing it at curbside for Freecycle---it was gone within hours). Then I got on line to search for the new machine. Wow, what a surprise. In the interest of energy efficiency and water conservation the industry has tampered with washing machine design to the extent that a basic machine now costs three times what it used to, runs up to 90 minutes per cycle, and, unless carefully managed, does not even get the clothes wet. Online reviews are nothing but complaints, even against the Best Buy rated machines. After four days of both of us searching, Karen happened upon a line of Speed Queen commercial, heavy duty machines with nary a bell nor whistle and no HE features other than water level and temp selection and full-time cold water rinse. She was lucky enough to locate one local appliance dealer who carried the line---forget looking at the big boxes. I dashed right over and grabbed the base model. It still cost two-to-three times what the old Kenmore did, but having run a test cycle I can say it is at least twice the machine too. :D
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 01:15:35 +0000
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