Stripped from the bowels of my friends' Facebook posts and other insanity that comes out of my head

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Front Load Washers are Satan

While you may feel that the title is a bit strong, I can assure you that no matter how much you "love" your front load washer, you truly hate it deep in your soul, and you just "love" it because you are stuck with it.

Here is why front load washers are satan.



1.) You have to clean it.

I'm not talking about just throwing one of those little, expensive, compressed circles of cleaning pucks into it and walking away.  No, you have to do that all the time, but you also have to wash that huge rubber gasket that keeps all the water from flooding your laundry room.

If that isn't bad enough, you are supposed to wipe and dry that same stupid rubber gasket after you finish using it.  Every. time. you. use. it.  Don't forget the back of the gasket, and the inner gunky part of the gasket, because if you don't, within seconds of walking away from the washer, it starts cultivating toxic and deadly mold.

Washing your clothes is bad enough (folding and putting them away is even worse) but who has time to do all of that cleaning and wiping and sopping up gunk after you do all of that crappy laundry?

Oh, did I mention you have to leave the door open?  Oh yeah, because no matter how well you scrub and sop and dry that thing, it's still wet and if you keep the door closed, it will grow mold of horrific proportions.

2.) Once those little mold dots start appearing on the gasket, the only way to get rid of them is to replace the gasket.

So, we forget ONCE to wipe and scrub and clean the stupid rubber gasket and you get some icky mold spots on the gasket.  Game over, you're done, throw up your hands and quit because they won't come off.  I don't care what horrible toxins you use, the gasket is screwed.  Oh sure, you can buy a gasket and watch some youtube videos and do it yourself, but who wants to do that?  Laundry and now gasket replacement?  Frankly it's easier to beat your clothes in a toxic stream than deal with all of this crap.

4.) The filter is hidden

Who doesn't forget kleenex, change, dog biscuits, and all manner of crap in your pockets.  I can hear you whining "you just have to check the pockets".  OFFS, on top of everything else you expect me to search every nook and cranny on every load??  That's what filters are for, except if you have a front loader where they had the "filter" behind a panel at the bottom that you have to remove three screws, put a basin under it to drain out the stink water that sits in there, then unscrew a thing and dig out nasty crap that is hiding in there and causing your washer to blink a cryptic F-21 message and refuse to drain.

When front loaders encounter the smallest of problems, they throw up their hands, give up and flash a stupid F number.  Some of them aren't even in the handy troubleshooting book.  Typically its something stuck in the "filter".

5.) They Walk.

Sure, all washers walk, but since you have a very top heavy front load washer on a spindly pedestal, when it gets even a tiny bit uneven during the spin cycle you may as well throw your fitbit on it and get some miles out of it.  The solution to that: use the handy storage pedestal to full cans of paint or bricks.  The solution to that would be not to use a pedestals, but then you have to lay on the floor to put in and take out the clothes.

6.) Does it clean?

Meh, it does ok.  Being all "green" and High Efficient (which stands for: uses only a tiny bit of water, so now you have a tiny bit of water sloshing around that is dirtier than a lot of water), you only use a teeny tiny bit of detergent.  Of course you are saying "oh, but that's good because it save you a lot of money".  Yes, you are right, but until you figure out that the more detergent you use, the more your clothes reek, and then you start using only a dropper full of detergent and fabric softener.

But we're back to all of the other complaints, and is it worth having a washer that is more needy that your drunk friend who just broke up with her 15th boyfriend in 3 months?

NOOOOO

Which is why this morning when my front loader died, I went out and bought a top loader this morning.



Good riddance.