Washing machine
On Saturday Maggie and myself went to Harvey Norman in City West to look at washing machines. We ended up getting a great deal, getting 40% off the ticketed price!
The machine was selling for $570, and because it's soo efficient, the Water Corporation want to give us a $150 rebate, in the form of a cheque! Tis is topped off with the fact that Steve's mates wrangled us cost price, bringing the total cost down to just $349. Good work Harvey.
It's a 5.5Kg, which is a little smaller than the 6.5Kg machine I had in Sandgate, but buying this with Maggie has really made me think about how stupid renting a washing machine and dryer was. Never again. We'd have owed it our-right in just 3 months, instead of paying for it 5 times over!
The delivery people are supposed to be dropping it off between 1:00 and 3:00PM, which leaves them half an hour.
I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to do some washing!
Edit: 23/08/2004 - 4:53PM
It's here, and it's about to get a hammering! I have four garbage bags worth of laundry to do.
You laundry nerd you! Hehehe
Renting the washing machine was a great idea at the time, as none of us had 2 cents to scratch our asses with. Renting it for as long as we did was the silly thing, but hey thats the price you pay for convenience. And a 6.5kg washer is generally quite a bit more expensive. I had to do 2 loads in the 6.5kg this morning (1 weeks worth of clothes). It’s stupid how much the price difference changes based on size of tub…. Surely its the mechanics of the washer you should be paying for..
you know, like water goes on, jiggle, water goes off, spin, water goes on, spin, water goes off, spin.
You know a Front loader washing machine works out cheaper for water and is more efficient, also takes better care of your clothing too, the top loaders tend to chew up your clothing twisting back and forth around the centre spindle.
Only downside is it takes a bit longer to wash your clothes.
Why can’t they build a top loader that works like a front loader? Would make sense to me, best of both worlds :)
you can, just tip your top loader over onto the side.. Just make sure you tape the lid shut tight or else the floor will be flooded *
* I wont be responsible for this happening nor for the stupidity of a person actually performing this method.
In other exciting “white good” news. I just bought myself a fridge today. I was looking at reconditioned ones at Fridge and Washer City. But ended up getting a new factory second, Fisher and Paykel . It had $200 off the normal price and well its not a white good, its a sexy stainless steel and dark blue one. So it matches all the rest of the stuff in my kitchen. Only flaw is a couple of real small dents in the door that you can barely see.
Ah Im all domesticated and shit…
The magic of front loaders is gravity! Just like in tumble dryers. Top loaders use the spin to get things moving but have gravity on their side for holding the water. Front loaders you need a good seal on the door. Fitzy, a big tub means bigger machinery to move those heavy loads!
Myers has a nice Whirlpool stainless up/down unit perfect for 1-2 people for $1150 at the moment (obviously you could probalby get minus 15% for interest free if you don’t want it and so on).
The reason for the increase in price as size goes up is that moving 6.5kg of stuff vs 5.5kg of stuff is a bit more difficult. Also they probalby realise that a 6.5 is gonna get a workout as most families buy at least 6.5kg. The insides would be strong I’d imagine.
I hate that I am going to have to start spending money on this stuff soon :P
Here in London we have a front loader. I don’t like it, because I have to bend down to put things in and out of it, and I can’t open it mid-cycle. It is also in the kitchen - since English houses do not have laundries they put their washers under the kitchen bench.
In Sydney, Mel and I rented a 6.5kg washing machine. We had it about 18 months, and we ended up paying the same amount to rent it as it would have to buy it. They offered to sell it to us for $1 after that 18 months, but we said no.
Madness, you say? Well, what was important to us was having someone take it away for free, when we wanted them to. It’s not like we could bring it with us back to Perth, as shipping would have cost more than the machine was worth. Selling it may not have been successful - we had a fridge to get rid of as well and it was a hassle finding someone to take it, let alone buy it. So for us, it was well worth it.
My First Post on Lambie’s board :)
I’ll just put my 2 cents in from my domesticated experience.
They do make a top load washer that works “similar” to a front load washer. LG (and Hitachi??) make it. It’s called the Turbo Drum.
These washing machines are a little more expensive then standard top loaders but slightly cheaper then front loaders.
When buying a washing machine trying and stay clear of the electronic ones. As cool and hip as they are, you’ll find yourself spending more money on it in the future. They hate voltage change!
A great washing machine to get is the ASKO Front loaders made in Sweden, the one thats my dads here detects how much clothes are in the tumbler and fills with water accordingly, its great for washing just one sock, not that I have washed one sock, but just in case I wanted to wash only one sock it would work well without wasting a ton of water.
The ASKO brand was about 3-4 times more expensive that what we were looking at :)
Their entry model was about $2,300 if I recall correctly, while most other brands didn’t come close to that with their top-end model.