There’s a commonality between many American’s these days. We are all just one emergency away from disaster. Many are living paycheck to paycheck, or the newly minted direct deposit to direct deposit.
This year, the drainage work I had to have done was enough to break my budget. When this pandemic struck, my salary was also cut by $1750 a year, with overtime eliminated.
Most recently, my daily driver has required much. The brake replacement costing $700, I still need to perform the 100k mile tuneup. While I have already acquired the parts needed, being spark plugs and intake plenum gaskets, I have extreme trepidation about performing the task. The fear of the unknown has always been one of my largest fears.
As if life wasn’t giving me enough to deal with, something happened with my washing machine. I’m not an expert in electronics or in major home appliances but all of the things shown tell me it wasn’t good.
I first discovered a trail of water in my basement in an L shape from my basement garage door to my washing machine. From there the possibilities were endless, that was until I opened the washing machine up. It was completely full of water. It was overflowing, causing this leak into my basement.
I borrowed a pump off of a friend who had lent me a pump when my basement was flooding. Thankfully it fit into the old washing machine, which was just a $75 Craigslist special. When I bought it, I promised myself that I would not be doing this song and dance again. I wanted to purchase something new and something that was Energy Star certified.
But first, I had to correct the issues. The water valves were leaking and would not shut off fully.
I did not want to replace these valves with the same thing. I wanted ball style valves without a flange for wall mounting. Thankfully when whoever set this up originally, they attached these with a threaded fitting, making replacement somewhat easy. Finding the valves I wanted ended up being a task however. The major big box stores did not have any. Menard’s said it was special order, Lowe’s stated they had 6 in stock online, so I place an order before I went to bed. By the time I woke up, that order had been cancelled. This is the second time this has happened to me when ordering something online from them.
I had a meeting the next day and as luck would have it that meeting took me into the direction of a small True Value hardware store in a town where I used to live. They had the valves I needed, but they were double the price.
So with the old washing machine cleared of water and moved out of the way, I got to work removing the valves. I had to put a fair amount of thread tape on to seal the valves, redoing one of them twice. But they function much better than the ones that were existing.
I then needed to do the thing I was dreading the most. I had to get rid of the old washing machine, and the old dryer I had replaced but never taken off. I also had 6 brake rotors sitting around from all of the brake work I’ve done in the past year.
I have my dad’s truck, but it’s currently not operational or road worthy. Most in the area charge to haul things off, no matter what the size. This has always stricken me as odd, as they receive money for scrap on these items. So I reached out, and a friend very openly let me borrow his truck. In kind, I left my Jeep with him. I’m not a fan of taking things from others and leaving them without.
My body is in horrible physical condition, and as I’ve learned it’s becoming weak. It made me happy to be able to accomplish this task.
When finished, I filled up the gas tank of my friends truck in appreciation. He uses it a lot for his work and drives a lot. I would much rather help someone I know than rent a piece of equipment and give money to a corporation.
Then it arrived, the new washer I bought. At first I was a little overwhelmed. I’m not used to having such nice things to handle such tasks.
It was a bit hard to get it into my utility room. The feet on this unit don’t allow it to slide like most washing machines that I’m used to. So I had to carry it. With new everything, the entire installation went very smooth.
The contrast is now obvious and clear however. This new machine has more than double the capacity of my old one. It automatically senses the load size and can be started with an app.
Thankfully I was able to get this on an 18 month no interest offer. I hope to pay this off quickly, then purchase the matching dryer. That will require some more upgrades, as my dryer outlet is a 3 prong, and new dryers require a 4 prong.
As it’s been for a while, I’m just living for the future, when some of my debts are paid, and the difference between living and surviving becomes clearer.