We were in total denial thinking our sturdy Miele (Americans: think GE, Speed Queen or Maytag) was in vibrant health. Looked the same. Sounded the same. Until one afternoon when an agonized crunch of metal followed by a distinct burning smell catapulted me to the basement, where the machine's lights were blinking in all the wrong places. I unplugged the washer and sniffed around, trying to determine whether that burning smell (I'd hauled out the wet wash, which also reeked of smoke) was coming from within our walls or the drum. The drum. Yes, that would be the case. Drum rolls seem to go with death, or execution, and our machine had worked itself to death, as the repairman confirmed when he paid his call.
Attaching a gizmo with a cord to his computer and plugging the other end of the cord into our machine, he determined that the washer built to last around twenty years was actually--if one measured its life in terms of wash loads--a whopping thirty-six years old. Plus, now that I think of it, we'd really tortured the poor dumb creature. All those grains of sand I hadn't completely shaken out of the kids' blue jeans back when they were in kindergarten and grade school. All those very full loads of sheets and comforters and pillows that had been vomited on (and worse) by sick kiddies. And just when we were starting to do a little less laundry, our loyal machine called it quits. We've combed Amazon and Otto and have settled on a more environmentally-correct model, and we think we got our money's worth from this one. RIP, Washy.
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