Doing laundry

A week or two ago, a washcloth got sucked into the inner workings of the washing machine. I didn't think a whole lot about it, since I figured that an occasional item must get sucked into the washing machine on a fairly regular basis. That and static cling explain all the disappearing socks in the world, right?

Well, no. Apparently socks just disappear because of static cling. Things that get sucked into the washing machine eventually clog it up, rendering it unable to drain.

At least this is what I now believe, after an afternoon spent with my washer. I threw a load of laundry in this morning and a little while after lunch, when I went to toss it into the dryer I discovered that it was all still wet. Very, very wet. And sitting in dirty water that hadn't drained.

This is the point when most people call someone, I suppose, but I've always secretly enjoyed taking things apart and figuring out how they work, and how hard could it be to find the drain in a washing machine and pull out a washcloth?

Heh. Famous last words. It turns out they design these things to discourage people like me. But stubborn survivalist that I am, I enlisted the help of G-Dog and together we proceeded to pull out every visible screw on the damn thing.

Take a good look at your washing machine next time you're in the laundry room -- there's a top on there that looks like it'll just pop right off, if only you could find its soft spot. But good luck trying to find the magical secret button that will undo the assembly. We had the guts of the washer spilled out all over the laundry room floor and were no closer to the clog than we were when I started the laundry this morning. Only now we could actually see the washcloth through the clear plastic corner of the drainpipe in the back of the washer, so we knew that it would be ridiculous to call a repairman and pay a weekend rate just to have the guy pull a washcloth out of the drain. It was maddening!

Enter the Internet. It's amazing how much information is out there that I thought would be proprietary -- schematics, owner's manuals, repair guides -- you name it and someone has written it down, scanned it in or taken a picture of it! Between some appliance repair sites and a quick call to the GE* repair line, we finally managed to figure out how to pry the top off the stupid thing (GE* was, btw, extremely reluctant to help me). From there, it was a quick matter for the heroic** G-Dog to reach down into the water, back where we now knew we should find the drain, and pull out the washcloth. A dozen or two screws later, and we had the thing put back together, pushed back into place, turned on and it was working fine. We rock!

Of course, it took us three hours to accomplish what would have taken 15 minutes if we knew what we were doing, but next time, we'll be armed with experience!

... Which is all my roundabout way of saying that I don't have anything interesting to post here today because I spent the entire afternoon wallowing in the guts of my washing machine.

*Relax -- we bought the washer used, so our $$$ didn't actually go to the Truly Evil GE.

**He was going along with all this, even though we both come from long lines of leave-it-alone-and-call-an-expert-type people and there were probably a gajillion ways he'd rather be spending his Saturday afternoon.