HEY DADS! How is your relationship with your…appliances? Has it gone through a rough patch? Do you find there’s only one-way communication? I understand.
Dishwasher. Vacuum cleaner. Washing Machine. Dryer. Stove. All appliances I’ve attempted to repair in the last few years.
I’ve bought parts on Amazon. I’ve bought better parts from local appliance stores. I’ve paid appliance repairmen to come out and fix them. New appliances. Used appliances. It doesn’t seem to make a difference. They all seem to break down at some point. Ours is a love-hate relationship.
The laundry room has been a source of contempt in the last year. This shouldn’t be. With nine kids you can deduce that we spend a lot of time in our laundry room. Washing. Drying. Scraping crayons and stickers out of the dryer.
We also have a clothesline outside. That place where most clotheslines reside I would assume. I’m looking out the window right now at our clothesline. With clothes hanging on it. With the rain from last night dripping off of them. So it has its issues too. Another time I’ll tell you about when our bedsheets were hanging out there real close to the ground and I thought I could just drive under them with the riding lawn mower.
Ah the dryer. Really I’m grateful for the thing. It’s great on rainy days, winter days or any other days when the clothesline is out of commission for one reason or another. But it’s been trouble for the last year. Ours is stacked. You know, stacked on top of the washing machine. Stacked tightly. Between two walls. In the bathroom. If there’s trouble it means dragging/lifting/dropping it off the washer and finagling it somewhere with enough room to work around it. Now that I think about it, our bathroom is more of an appliance warehouse. Because to work on the washer or dryer you need to somehow get it around the two chest freezers we have squeezed in there too.
Has your dryer squeaked and squealed before? During my appliance apprenticeship on Youtube, I learned that it’s the rollers inside the dryer making that sound. I’m sure all my neighbours now recognize the sound as it’s been blasting on and off for a couple months.
Since the dryer was screaming away and most likely wouldn’t fix itself, me and my (willing?) assistant – my oldest daughter Annabelle – hefted the dryer down and over to a workable spot. After my incident with the screw and the bike ramp (read about that here) I was sure to wear work boots this time. Me and the boys pulled the dryer apart and changed the rollers. We only had to reference Youtube five times because we had swapped out these rollers before. LAST YEAR!
We managed to get the rollers in and the squeals disappeared as if by magic. And by sweat. Now clothes will be dried and the people will rejoice. Hopefully the boys and the girls learned a little bit about repairing appliances. I learned that we should probably own two dryers. Or fewer clothes. I didn’t lose my cool and I learned about patience. That seems to be a theme as a dad wouldn’t you say?
You’ve got what it takes dad! Dry those clothes and make every moment count!
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