My Husband, The Hero

In addition to being the most creative spouse in this house, Ward also saved us a bunch of money this evening. Here is the tale:

It feels as though everything is falling apart. His truck has been in the shop 3 times this month, our printer has stopped printing (thus further complicating the Christmas Invitation task) and recently our washer has been testy. It is a Kenmore Elite HE4T with a bad attitude. We've owned it for just over 2.5 years and only recently has it been giving us error messages like F02 and SUD. Being a HE washer I only use HE Tide and never put very much soap in it but still the messages when I finally looked it up on the internet and found that baby socks, pencils or nails could have blocked the drain pipe. I had Ward look into this a week ago because since the babies were born I have lost quite a few of their socks never to be seen again. Well last week he found 13 socks, two baby washclothes and one of my socks in the liner around the wash tub. We were almost thrilled (I had thrown out some of those other socks, and some of them were very cute) and thought the washer was going to be happy with us. Unfortunately, the problem continued. I would just clear the machine when I got the error message and have to rewash entire loads (which was a huge waste of water, electricity and time) and was beginning to wonder if I should call Kenmore when today the washer would NOT rinse a load of clothes. No matter what we did only more and more water filled the tub.

After the kids went to bed I got the trusty shop vac out and sucked the water out and rinsed the clothes in the sink and put them in the dryer for the time being until we could fix the washer. I found a website called FIX YA and found a possible solution to our washers problem, the drain inside the machine, not just the liner, could have blockages.

Ward was able to locate the drain and what did he find?

Four more baby socks, a Color Guard sheet, a pencil in pieces and an assortment of nails and screws. You wouldn't believe how many small things had gotten in their and blocked the drain. We cleaned her up and put her back together and ran the load again, this time our old washer ran like a charm. No problems.

Apparently, my washer doesn't read my blog either, because I did thank her earlier in the week. She must have been feeling over worked and under appreciated. I'm going to have to clean her drains and liners more often (and gosh these HE washers are a lot of work)!

-june

*I was completely aware that these socks had gone missing. My mother-in-law told me that they just go out in the drain and disappear into the septic tank. I was saddened but never thought they would block up the washer because I am dense, just ask Ward. I am going to have to start using those laundry bags I think.