I just had to do one last load with the old detergent. I just had to do it. I used a third as much as I’d been using.
And guess what? Yep. The machine quit again. Okay, I give up. I cried “uncle”.
I got the machine door open, unplugged it, dumped some clean, cold water into the drum.
Then I put on socks and shoes, grabbed my car keys and went down the the grocery store where I planned on buying HE detergent. Once inside the store, I got some goat’s milk (I used my last can trying to get Annie to lap, ended up dumping it down the garbage disposal as well as a bunch of partially eaten cans of cat food and jars of baby food), replenished my stock of baby food (always good in a crunch for a sick kitty), some 409 orange spray for Brian, then stopped in front of the detergents.
Hmmm…HE, HE, HE, where are the HE detergents? The guy on the phone said Tide makes some. I go to the powders. The only Tide HE they had was a little box that would do 32 loads. Well, on a good day I can get five or six loads done, multiply that by say two or three days a week and that box wouldn’t last very long (I’m always amazed at how much laundry I have; I don’t know where it comes from - I’ve got four tall trashcans that we use as laundry baskets, one for jeans and sweatpants, one for clothes, one for towels, and one for the wash towels, like for the car and my dustrags).
So, I check out the liquid detergents. I found more Tide HE and the largest one they carry does over fifty loads and it was on sale for $12.99. I picked up two of those and got some new Snuggle fabric softener, this has an “emerald” scent. I checked out of the store, came home and went directly back to the laundry room. I started the drain/spin cycle and when it was done, put in a load of laundry.
No problem. Not one. Machine ran like a dream. I did another load, this time adding some Oxyclean for a prewash cycle (socks and underwear). Once again, not a problem. Smooth as silk. I did two more loads last night and I’m on my second this morning (my God, where does all this laundry come from? there are only two of us here, how on earth do we get this much stuff dirty?).
And I like my machine again. I’m now glad that I did not attack it with a big hammer yesterday.
Sometimes, restraint can be a good thing.
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