white goods bads

I'm not very happy with modern life at the moment.

With three kids and a disabled husband constantly making a mess, I do at least one load of laundry each day, often two if beds have been changed/towels used/potty training failed etc. I need to. If I'm lazy, and miss a day, the baskets overflow, there are not enough clean clothes for the kids to wear to school and it takes days to catch up again. However, because I am lazy, i have worked out a system - i put a load on each night before i go to bed, then when I get up in the morning that load goes into the dryer, and another load goes into the machine.

Last week was no exception, other than when i woke up on Thursday morning my washing machine was not bleeping at me! I looked, and saw that it was still full of water, and wet clothes. the door was still locked, and the machine had just stopped half way through it's cycle. I tried the normal solution of turning it off and on again:-) No luck. there was power, but none of the other buttons worked. My next solution was to complain to Aggie in the hope that he could fix it, but he poked it a few times and suggested that the motherboard had probably gone.

Fortunately, knowing that we are fairly laundry intensive, we had bought a good machine a few years ago, and paid for their "lifetime" cover which the salesman assured us covered parts, labour and appliance replacement for ever - basically meaning that other than deliberate damage, we should never have to buy another machine. So i phoned them up, and gave the details over the phone.

An enineer turned up on Friday, spent approx 30 seconds looking at it, barely touched anything, agreed it was the motherboard and stomped off, saying he would order one.

So we went into the weekend already behind on laundry. It was LMD's birthday party, so my mother, sister and cousin G were staying over. So by Sunday I knew we were not going to make it through until the new part arrived. I went to the laundrette. Fortunately there is one just at the end of my road. At nearly £3 a load, and smaller machines than mine, I did two loads straight off. At a load a day, it will ake me just under two months before I have spent enough to buy a new machine altogether! I didn't pay for their dryers though - I brought it all home wet and did it there.

I phoned on tuesday to find out when the part would arrive. we were told Thursday, so it was another trip to the laundrette yesterday. Wet clothes in the dryer at home.

I woke this morning and went to get LMB some clean school clothes out of the dryer - and guess what! That had broken too - lots of noise but no tumbling going on - and still full of damp clothes! Aggie reckons it is the drive belt which he can fix, when he gets the part!

A different engineer called us today to see of it was OK to come round between 3pm and 5pm to fit the new motherboard. Not really as it was parents evening tonight, but we agreed. Aggie went to parents evening and I stayed at home and waited.

And waited.

Aggie came home. i cooked supper. we sat down. the doorbell rang. At 5.30 the engineer turned up. A nice guy, he came in, looked at it, pulled it out, fitted the new motherboard, and came to tell us that was not really the problem. The otherboard was burned out, but only because the door lock was knackered. We would need a new door lock before it could be used. he will order one and come back when it's available. Oh joy. He expects it will be another 5 days.

I'll be back to the laundrette tomorrow (not sure when as I have an interview smack across the middle of the day, but....). And Aggie is off to try to buy a new drive belt for the dryer. But we might all be dressing in paper suits pretty soon. Kudos to Tomorow's World circa 1975:-)