New Washer, Finally!

Our new washer finally came today. Of course, it had to be on a day that was inconvenient to both of us, and the best time frame the delivery company could give us was between noon and 4pm, "thanks for narrowing it down for us there". They showed up right in the 20 minute window when neither one of us could be home. Thankfully the delivery guys were really nice and waited.

We've been out of a washer for probably 6 weeks now. We've waited until laundry baskets of dirty clothes were spilling out of the bedroom and into the hallway before we would go to the laundry mat. Then to save money, and improve the smell of our clothes, we would wash them, pile them back into the laundry baskets wet and bring them home to dry on the line or in our dryer.



I have now learned how to hook up a washer. Never having done it before, I poured over the instructions, rechecking the lines to makes sure I had tightened all couplings sufficiently, I didn't want to be mopping up a mess for the rest of the night. As I was checking my work against the instruction booklet, I remembered my Dad's devotion to instruction manuals. My brother and I used to get so frustrated waiting for him to read through things before he would put a toy together or play a new game. "Just start, we'll figure it out as we go" or "Well that's not what the picture shows". When we tried to do something our way and it didn't work and we went to get him to help, the first thing he would ask was, "Did you read the directions?", it was so maddening.
It didn't seem important then when it was just a game, or toy, or bike. But with a house, and water damage, or ruined clothes, or just the thought of having to spend the night cleaning up a dirty wash water spilled all over the basement floor with a dog and three cats trying to help clean up, was well worth the time to read through the directions and know that I did it right the first time.