I spuddle.

Last week, while Clayton was out of town, our dryer caught fire and did not ignite the entire house, burning us all to cinders. We were not really at risk of burning as we were at the beach watching the poor baby elephant seal being gawked at by the crowd, which included us, making us as much gawkers as the rest of the pack. But I digress.

When I finally hauled the sandy, cranky brood back to the house, it was long past dinner time, so I did what I do in these situations. I plonked the small ones in front of their home-learning device, the large one in his room with his video game, and whipped up a gourmet meal. By “gourmet meal”, I mean I boiled some egg noodles and added ham and peas. While dinner cooked itself, I turned on the bath for the kids and went downstairs to get the sheets so I could make the bed (doesn’t my life sound glamorous?) while the kids continued to educate themselves, a term I use here loosely to mean “watch tv with dazed expressions”. As soon as I opened the dryer door, I knew that stench of smoke could not be blamed on C., even though he is a Stinky Smoker. For one thing, he never smokes inside. Certainly not inside the dryer. That would be ridiculous. How would he fit? For another thing, this stench of smoke was clearly emanating from the blackened burnt husks of my formerly white bedsheets. Not being one to panic, I immediately called the fire department — during which time The Birdy managed to change the bath from “bath” to “shower”, something I didn’t notice for enough time that the water began to drip through the ceiling — to simply ask for advice, using the non-emergency number. “We’ll be there in two minutes,” said the fire guy.

“No sirens,” I said. “Really, the neighbours already think I’m neurotic from the last time I called when the furnace was on fire.”

“OK, then it will take three minutes,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “Maybe you should not even bring the big truck, just pop by in your own car. In your regular clothes.”

“Ha ha,” he said, as though I was kidding. I was not.

Needless to say, FOUR minutes later (my GOD, they’re slow), one guy showed up in a smallish fire truck, alerting none of the neighbours, who I told about the whole thing anyway, so all that craftiness was for nothing. Once in the smoky basement, he called for back up and two other firemen who he had cleverly left outside so as not to alarm me came leaping into the house in their firemen hats, which they had to take off so they didn’t whack their heads on the low ceilings. The Bun liked the hats a lot. (He also suggested that if they needed to poop at all, we did have a potty, all they had to do was ask.) (He’s very polite).

The three of them together ascertained that indeed, based on the burnt sheets and the ashes in the door of the dryer, there had been a fire that was now out. Then they pulled the dryer from the wall to investigate the back and nearly ripped out all the natural gas piping, which — dare I say — may have created a larger problem than a fire that had already gone out.

The point of that long story is that the dryer is out of commission permanently. The washer broke last year, but we continued to use it because we are stubborn, and the flooding underneath with every load didn’t make enough of a mouldy disgusting mess to stop us. Still, signs seemed to be pointing to a new washer and dryer.

So.

On Saturday, we went on our mission. I thought it was sort of exciting, which probably says a lot about my life. A new washer and dryer! Something big enough to hold all our laundry! Something new that didn’t leak all over the floor! Or ignite while we looked at rare marine mammals!

We started at Sears, where the saleswoman was nice but a bit underwhelming and very strongly scented with what I believe was Calvin Klein’s Obsession, a smell I haven’t sniffed since the late eighties. She showed us the machine that she owns herself and discussed cleaning hockey equipment, which I’ve never done but she seemed very upbeat about. Somewhere during her sales spiel, I was overwhelmed by a sudden need to faint. So a great deal of what she said was obscured by a flurry of thoughts such as “dying in the appliance section of Sears Whole Home would suck” and “I wonder what they’ll give me if I faint. I hope it’s not orange juice because orange juice gives me an itchy rash. I wonder if I’m allergic to oranges?” She may well have been very very informative during this period. I wouldn’t know, my ears were buzzing and I was concentrating on staying conscious.

Before I nearly blacked out, I had told her I wanted an enormous washer & dryer into which I could throw everything I owned, that would then emerge from the dryer flat and folded. She laughed merrily and then found us a combo that would, at least, wash and dry our clothes en masse and make it so we would not have to iron, which made it seem like a magical fairy godmother was going to live in our basement pressing shirts and turning pumpkins into horse-drawn carriages, which sounded neat to me. I wondered if the fairy could be talked into also occasionally babysitting. Sadly, this sort of magic came in at a cost of $1000 more than we wanted to spend.

Out we went to store number two. At Store Number Two, a discount warehouse type outfit, the salesman was only about two IQ points above wearing his underwear on the outside his pants. (Yes, I checked to see that he wasn’t). When faced with the news that we needed a gas dryer, his face went completely blank. When asked about the difference between steam dryers and regular dryers, he blanked again. When we inquired about top loaders with no agitators, he looked confused and his mouth slackened. He showed us a front loader with electric dryer and scratched his head when we explained that it wasn’t quite what we were after. Eventually (and when I say “eventually”, I mean “at least fifteen minutes later”, he pulled up his store’s own website on the computer and let us look at it. He didn’t know anything about any of the products but said I could click on them for more information. Which was… well, I don’t think I need to say more. As we ran from the shop, he followed us shouting, “No matter where you buy your set, call me if you have any questions! I’m very knowledgeable and knowledge is only knowledge if you share it!” I am still wracking my brain trying to think of a scenario where I might purchase a washer & dryer somewhere else and actually call this guy to ask for his laundering advice. I’m sure it might come up though. I’ll keep his card handy, if by “handy”, I mean “in the recycling”.

The next store was one where they specialized only in high-end fancy appliances, so we had high hopes for some actual knowledge in a “You get what you pay for” sort of way. We were greeted by a friendly guy I’ll call “Chuck” because I’ve forgotten his name. We told Chuck what we were looking for, a story which was actually starting to bore ME by then, so I can only imagine how gripping it would be for an audience (lots of space, pressed shirts, etc.) (a list that I’ll admit was getting longer to include: being able to wash sleeping bags and duvets and hockey equipment, even though none of us play hockey). Chuck appeared to listen and then began to tell us how we could avoid the “wrinkled shirt” situation by simply standing beside the dryer and removing the shirts when still damp and hanging them to dry. It became apparent that one of the three of us was drunk. I’ll give you a hint: he was wearing a name tag that said “Chuck” (only his name wasn’t Chuck, and his name tag said whatever his name actually was). At that point, both C. and I could have used a drink ourselves but apparently Chuck wasn’t up for sharing his mickey. Anyway, we asked for pricing on three units, one of which was apparently invented by NASA to wash space suits. Space suits! Awesome. Very comparable to our own laundry needs so an obvious choice for us. Except not. We asked Chuck if he would mind making it appear that he was giving us a deal by adding $50 to the prices and then telling us he’d give us $50 off for being good customers. This sort of customer banter wore Chuck out. He became quite agitated. “I can’t do that!” he said. “We’re a wholesaler! I’ll give you only my best price!”

“Fine,” we said, chastised. “Your best price.”

And we waited. And waited. While we waited, one of Chuck’s fellow salesmen (there were about 12 of them, to 2 customers — us — in the entire vast, expensive-looking store) came over to rave more about the space suit washing machine. He actually managed to use the word “shit” four times, which I thought was impressive. That’s the kind of knowledge you only get in the fancy stores. Finally Chuck staggered back from his desk, which was only two feet away, to inform us that choice A was “around $2000″, choice B was “a little more” and choice C was “a little less”. Very firm pricing, as you can see. Still having no idea how much the damn things actually were, we asked about delivery. Chuck leaned in. “We contract it out,” he said breathily, nearly killing us with the fumes. “It’s somewhere around a hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty.”

Wow. With that kind of precision low-pricing, I can see why the store was swarming with customers.

We left.

I think we went somewhere else, but I’m actually getting bored with my own recap so I’ll cut it short and tell you we went back to Sears, where our formerly lacklustre saleswoman now seemed like a future Nobel winner with an engaging and intelligent way about her. We forked out a ridiculous amount of money (i.e. double what we had planned to spend) and walked out with a piece of paper saying that next week we would be the proud owners of a canyon-sized Kenmore washer and gas steam dryer, complete with fairy godmother and the capacity to wash hockey equipment using next to no water, saving the environment AND washing our clothes in the best way possible. Exciting, no?

Except then we came home and checked the internet. Where thousands of reviews are available ranging from a low of: “This washing machine is so bad that I’ve decided to end it all, these will be the last words I type.” To a high of: “I only give this machine one star because zero stars is not an option. If you want one, I’d suggest simply coming and taking mine because I’d be happy to give it away.”

I wish I had a clever ending to this post, but I don’t. All I know is that I now know more about washing machine and dryer technology than I ever hoped to know, and we still haven’t decided what to do. Keep the overpriced Kenmore that makes people suicidal in spite of its fairy-tale features? Or have to endure another day of appliance shopping?

Stay tuned.

Filed under: Shopping