*Disclaimer: I love my wife dearly. She is my rock, soulmate and the love of my life. With that being said, here we go.
My dear wife is easily the most hardheaded person I’ve ever known, and this at times has led to some of the most frustrating times of my life. For instance, she has NEVER been wrong about anything we’ve ever argued about. Seems reasonable, right? That’s an incredible feet for being together for 13 years – she should get a trophy or something.
So one of the things we have argued about more times that I can recall is about doing the laundry. One of my pet peeves is when something I’ve left in my pockets gets washed, and put into the dryer. Over the years countless things have been lost from this.
In my opinion, it’s common sense. Whomever puts the clothes into the washing machine should check all pockets for anything that could be ruined, or do damage to the machine. My wife argues that the pockets should be checked BEFORE they ever reach the dirty cloths pile (yes, we have a pile, not a hamper, I mean we have a hamper, but it hardly gets used) by whoever wore the garment with the pockets. This doesn’t make sense to me in a number of ways. What is the ids put something, lets say a crayon in one of their pockets and it gets washed and dried in the laundry and ruins some clothes? Do you really think a 4 year old will check their pockets when they randomly change clothes? Good luck with that. What is I have been working all day outside repairing a deck, gate or a fence and I leave screws in my pockets when I’ve worked all day and want nothing more to jump into the shower to clean off? The bottom line here is, sometimes we forget, or accidentally leave something in one of our pockets by ACCIDENT. So checking pockets before washing the clothes acts as a last defense mechanism that should protect whats in the pockets as well as the machines.
A couple of weeks ago before we left for vacation, our dryer started making this really high pitched screeching sound combined with this jagged rumbling sound that was shaking the dryer across the laundry room floor. Before I knew what happened I heard a huge pop and the machine just went nuts bouncing all over the place. I quickly turned it off, but couldn’t get a chance to look into the problem until we returned from vacation.
Fast forward to the day after we return to vacation.
I start tearing the dryer apart, piece by piece trying to determine the problem. After I disconnected the dryer vent from the dryer, this is what I found INSIDE the dryer vent:
Okay, this is not good. Apparently all of these screws and buttons were spun through the mechanics of the dryer and it damaged some vital party of it. So I dug deeper and removed the back panel of the dryer, and what did I find? The dryer’s fan had been damaged and one of the blades had totally broken off.
Obviously the screws, buttons and whatever else that was left in pockets got stuck inside and destroyed the fan, causing the fans blade to get lodged inside and that was what was causing the loud noises and serious vibrations that sounded like a locomotive going through the laundry room.
This could have easily been avoided, by just simply checking the pockets. Now I have to order dryer parts and hope that no other damage was done, so because of my wife’s stubbornness and hard-headiness, we might have to buy a brand new dryer, and this one isn’t even a year old.
So I sat down with her last night and discussed it, and she STILL insists it’s not the person who’s doing the laundry’s responsibility, but the person who takes off their clothes!
I’m just not sure where to go from here. Maybe I should put up a clothesline like we had when we were kids – maybe after hanging the clothes for a few weeks she’ll conform then. But probably not because like I said before, she’s the most hardheaded person I’ve ever known.
Ah, just one of the many joys of a healthy and happy marriage.