Oh, there are still machines that you can put soap and water in that will wiggle your clothes around a little. But these machines are not washing machines in that they don't really wash clothes.
Household appliances have been getting worse every few years for about 30 years, and the government issues new regulations constantly demanding that appliances use less and less energy. Yet if you study it, the energy savings are quite small, and the expense to the consumer is great.
Toilets don't flush anymore. Dishwashers don't get the dishes clean. A three-minute shower now takes 15 minutes, saving no water but using up a lot of valuable time.
And now liberals are going after our washing machines.
The new washers are designed to use substantially less water. The consumer is no longer allowed to set the water level. The government mandates that cold water be mixed in with the hot, so clothes can no longer be washed in hot water. And of course phosphates, which do minimal harm if any to the environment, were removed from washing detergents years ago.
The result is a highly complex washer that is subject to break. And even when it's working, it isn't working very well. In most models the agitator has been removed. The consumer no longer has the ability to set water levels, since they are set by weighing the laundry load. So a super-dirty set of laundry is just going to stay dirty and smelly.
Front-load washers simply do not work; I've owned them. They become moldy and smelly, and the unclean clothes end up smelling really bad when they come out of the wash. The new high-efficiency top-loaders don't work either; the clothes remain dirty. And to provide these unimpressive results many of the new washers have a cycle time of almost two hours.
Faced with the prospect of not being able to buy a decent washer Jinny and I started to do some research, and soon stumbled onto reviews of Speed Queen top-load washers, particularly the old mechanical model. Since these are commercial-grade washers they aren't subject to quite as many regulations as home models.
The hot water is not diluted with cold. It uses plenty of water, and although it won't fill up more than 75 percent of the drum with water, there is a manual override that will allow you to have as much water as you wish. The lid doesn't lock during the wash cycle, so you can add items that might have dropped on the floor. Satisfied customers report that their clothes are much cleaner with a shorter cycle time of only 30 minutes. That's right, it does twice the job in much less than half the time.
We could have ordered our Speed Queen from Amazon, but they are for sale at Rebel Appliance in Oxford. I try to make a point of shopping at businesses with "Rebel" in the name, so that's where we went. Our new washer and dryer arrive on Friday, and they are going to install and set them up for us.
We ordered the mechanical model that hasn't changed much in the past 30 years. They do offer an electronic model, but that's just something else to break, and the electronic models apparently takes away some of the freedoms that we have with the old mechanical model.
You might find it odd that I'm singing the praises of a product that hasn't arrived at my house yet. Well, I'm confident based on the experiences of many others that this washing machine will serve our needs. Just read the reviews on Amazon for yourself!
It's not always easy, but we can fight back against liberal control freaks, and the Speed Queen mechanical washer is one way of doing so. Although it's a good washer, you should still add a big scoop of laundry phosphate with every load. Add a half-scoop of phosphate to every dishwasher load as well.
While the leftists prattle on about how they saved $19 in operating costs with their "modern" washing machine, we can point out that we are happy to spend $19 in order to save dozens of hours of time and to prevent countless clothes from being ruined.
If you are in the market for a washer, or think you may be in the future, now is the time to buy. Liberals can't stand for people to be happy, and soon the Eye of Sauron will latch onto the Speed Queen and find a way to make it as crappy as all of the other washers on the market right now.
