As you know we have a teeny tiny washer/dryer combo that has been tirelessly washing/drying our clothes since we moved into this unit in August last year. A couple weeks ago we returned from a week in Auckland and I eyed the mountain of laundry that needed to be done: all the clothes we took on the trip plus some that I didn't get to before we left as well as sheets and towels. Since you can wash about 1/3 of what you could fit in a standard US washer I figured I would doing laundry nonstop for at least a week. I was resigned to my fate because, well, that's just the way it is here. I figured the sheets need to cleaned first and placed the fitted sheet and one pillowcase in the washer. Part way through the rinse cycle the machine seemed to pause, think for a moment and then decided to stage a mutiny. It simply would not continue through the rest of the wash cycle. With a front loading machine that was now full of water but refusing to do anything about it the door remained locked regardless of the button combinations I attempted. I figured if I could at least get the sheet and pillowcase out of the machine we could rinse them in the shower and rang them up to dry. Right. After consulting the manual, trying additional troubleshooting button combinations I realized that I was not going to win this one. Immediately, I emailed our property management people to say that we needed our machine repaired ASAP.
Next I returned to the reality that, because the machine was holding the fitted sheet and one pillowcase hostage, I needed something with which to dress the bed. At this point Tim jumped in to calm me down. We tucked the flat sheet onto the mattress and just had our one blanket as a top cover. Not too bad. I mean it could've been worse - both sheets trapped in the machine. I shudder at the thought. Next, was the conundrum of pillowcases. With three pillows between the two of us we only had one clean case at this point. Again, Timmy to the rescue. He deftly extracted two of his softest t-shirts from the closet and put them on two of the pillows. I can't say I've ever dressed a pillow with a shirt but I have to say his t-shirts were the perfect rectangle shape to accommodate the standard sized pillows.
With that crisis averted we heard from property management that someone would be out to look at the machine on Tues. Unfortunately, when we returned home Tues afternoon we found a note saying that the machine needed a new pump and would be fixed at a later date. We also found that they had managed to open the door and save the sheet and pillowcase which were then lovingly placed in a heap in our shower. We had a fun time ringing out the excess water on our patio. Later I realized that they had used our bath towels, Hotel no less, to mop of water that presumably gushed from the machine when the door was opened. Yeah. Thanks for that. So those needed to be washed as well and the machine was still out of commission. Sigh.
A few days passed with no word. I was becoming increasingly agitated as our small cache of clean clothes disappeared into the mountain of dirty laundry. I wasn't sure what to do because there are relatively few laundromats in Wellington and I couldn't bear that thought of lugging dirty (and then clean) clothes the 15+ blocks. It was then I had a brilliant idea. I asked our property management if there was an empty unit where I could do laundry. The next day I received permission and the key to another tiny studio with a functional washer/dryer. I can't tell you how happy I was at that moment. For the next week I spent some days working from home in order to wash as many clothes, sheets and towels as possible.
A couple days ago the repair was made and I warily decided to wash some towels to make sure everything was ok with the machine. Thankfully, all was well. So we have just (two weeks later) caught up on laundry. You may laugh but it is a reason to celebrate!
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