I'm now the proud owner of a front loader HE washing machine. I've only washed a few loads of clothes, and have discovered something already - I'm kind of a slob when it comes to washing. Things fall out of the laundry basket on the way down the stairs. Caitlin's socks reside all over the house, and I am not good at collecting them all. I forget things. I find clothes behind the kids hampers 10 minutes after starting a load of laundry. I'm going to have to come up with a new system, because you can't just re-open the front loading machine when you realized you've forgotten something (or, in Caitlin's case, suddenly spotted a sock under the sofa). I use to be able to do this, long ago, when I had to walk to other buildings, or down several flights of stairs to find a laundry room (hoping there was a machine available). But then again, I was only washing my own clothes. Maybe over time I'll get better, but we have a lot of kids socks whose mate is still hiding somewhere.
It is nice to have a dryer that just works. With the exception of the 5 months in our rental house in Colorado, I haven't had a reliable dryer for almost 7 years. In 2002 we rented a duplex with a very nice washer and dryer. Brand new. After years and years of apartment living, laundromats, and sharing washers and dryers, we felt so spoiled. We moved from that place in the spring of 2004, and I've had to monitor the dryer ever since. The next dryer cooled down so drastically after the machine reached a certain stage - which was about half an hour into the cycle - that I had to reset the machine back in order to get dry clothes. Half and hour later I had to manually set it on cool down. The dryer that came with our current house had no buttons when we first moved in. The cycles were controlled by a vice-grip set of pliers that you used to move to turn the dryer on and off. Right after I bought new knobs, the timer went out. My clothes dried, but only if I monitored the time of the cycle. And manually set it on cool down. So now, almost 7 years later, I don't have to worry about how long the dryer has been on. It turns itself off! I don't have to set a timer. I don't have to panic that I forgot to turn off the dryer after leaving the house (and then turn around and drive home to double check that the dryer is off). The other night I had clothes in dryer, and went to bed before they were dry, because I could! In all reality, I have so little room to complain. I haven't had to share a dryer for years. And my clothes always dried. So it was good. But when you do all the laundry for 4 people, it's nice to not have to always monitor the dryer.
So now we are officially adults. It had nothing to do with age, I guess, but with lifestyle choices. We own a home. We are no longer nomadic. Now we'll have to decide whether or not we want to move them whenever our time here is done. I'm a little sad that everything we own no longer fits into the small to mid-sized U-Haul. We have too much stuff. We've grown up. But what about all those other adults that really don't grown-ups who don't qualify as adults. They still revel in their child-like living? Maybe they should own a washer and dryer.
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