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For whatever reason, my wife and I have evolved a separation of responsibilities in our household:
But we each have a few special responsibilities that don't come up often:
I am the sort of person who, when an appliance breaks down, tries some basic troubleshooting steps (checking the circuit breaker, checking to see if a GFCI has tripped, unplugging the device and plugging it back in), then telephones an expert and has them come out. I'd rather not spend 12 hours fruitlessly trying to fix something when someone could come out and do it for me. That being said, the people who've come out and "done it for us" haven't always done a bang-up job.
Carole somehow, somewhere, acquired the aptitude to read and decipher technical specs for devices like dishwashers and dryers. She's got tools aplenty down in the mud room -- socket sets, voltage meters, you name it. She's literally requested them for Christmas and her birthday. (No, ladies, I'm not kidding. I wouldn't normally give my wife the equivalent of a waffle iron for her birthday -- it's always been her idea.)
A few months ago, she got to be very sick of the fact that our dishwasher didn't drain at the end of a cycle. We could generally get it to drain by running the garbage disposal in the sink next to the washer, then cycling the 'cancel/drain' button on the dishwasher a few times (or a few dozen times), but it was aggravating as hell and we certainly didn't feel good about putting dishes away that had been sitting above dirty water and, for all we knew, hadn't gotten a proper clean rinse. She finally snapped, got the manual, disassembled the dishwasher, strewed parts everywhere and found that a single, critical, key part was actually worn out and was keeping it from draining. We ordered that piece, she installed it, and the dishwasher's worked like a charm ever since.
Yay Carole!
On Sunday of this week, we were doing laundry -- we had kind of a backlog from having been out of town and from not having done a lot over the week between Christmas and New Year's -- when suddenly, our dryer just stopped. One second it was running, the next it wasn't. We checked that the outlet was still supplying electricity -- it was -- and I said "well, damn."
Carole got online, spent quite a while researching precisely what model of dryer we really had (it's a dryer sold by company A but actually built by company B and it was the videos for company B's dryers of a completely different name that she actually needed), found videos and help pages that showed her what the problem might be, and then she disassembled the living heck out of that dryer. I should have taken pictures. When all was said and done, it came down to two fuses: one that she thought was the culprit, and one that actually was the culprit. She had me come down to use stupid-male-brute-force to yank the first fuse out and was bummed when it tested intact and working, but further research and digging turned up another fuse deep down inside and that fuse was the one that had burned out. The fuse was a heat sensor that was supposed to burn out if the dryer was getting too warm, so as part of Carole's efforts she extensively cleaned the dryer duct and vacuumed the wazoo out of all the parts inside the dryer and around it and behind it. Her theory is that it wasn't getting good circulation and hence, became too warm.
Carole instructed me to spend Monday visiting every store in the county that might sell replacement fuses for dryers and I said "Uh huh." I knew that if I called and described the part I'd probably get someone who'd say "Yeah, sure, we have that" just to get me off the phone and then I'd get there and find that they had no such thing. It turned out to be something we could order from an appliance parts superstore online for about $20 as part of a little kit which, it turned out, we needed in order to install it. And they had the part here on Wednesday afternoon.
Last night she went down and put the fuse in, reassembled the dryer, plugged it back in, had me securely reattach the duct from the wall to the back of the dryer (confusingly, she said "you're really good at this kind of thing" and then stood back smiling as I pathetically tried to use duct tape to prevent any chance of the duct ever coming loose), and then ...
She started the dryer, and it worked absolutely fine.
That's one extremely expensive diagnostic repair visit and one followup visit (to install a $20 set of parts) we won't be calling our local appliance repair shop to schedule! Hats off to Carole!
- I handle the cooking, baking, grocery shopping, most of the laundry, household organization and decluttering, and during the warm weather, the lawn mowing.
- She handles the vacuuming and the cats' litter boxes and, during the warm weather, the weeding.
But we each have a few special responsibilities that don't come up often:
- I am in charge of the computers, backups, and all that sort of technology. When a computer breaks or suffers an infarction, I fix it. I till the garden in the spring. I am also in charge of first contact with any alien civilizations that land on our property, including our neighbors' marauding chickens.
- She is in charge of fixing broken appliances and maintaining our garden and lawn tractor.
I am the sort of person who, when an appliance breaks down, tries some basic troubleshooting steps (checking the circuit breaker, checking to see if a GFCI has tripped, unplugging the device and plugging it back in), then telephones an expert and has them come out. I'd rather not spend 12 hours fruitlessly trying to fix something when someone could come out and do it for me. That being said, the people who've come out and "done it for us" haven't always done a bang-up job.
Carole somehow, somewhere, acquired the aptitude to read and decipher technical specs for devices like dishwashers and dryers. She's got tools aplenty down in the mud room -- socket sets, voltage meters, you name it. She's literally requested them for Christmas and her birthday. (No, ladies, I'm not kidding. I wouldn't normally give my wife the equivalent of a waffle iron for her birthday -- it's always been her idea.)
A few months ago, she got to be very sick of the fact that our dishwasher didn't drain at the end of a cycle. We could generally get it to drain by running the garbage disposal in the sink next to the washer, then cycling the 'cancel/drain' button on the dishwasher a few times (or a few dozen times), but it was aggravating as hell and we certainly didn't feel good about putting dishes away that had been sitting above dirty water and, for all we knew, hadn't gotten a proper clean rinse. She finally snapped, got the manual, disassembled the dishwasher, strewed parts everywhere and found that a single, critical, key part was actually worn out and was keeping it from draining. We ordered that piece, she installed it, and the dishwasher's worked like a charm ever since.
Yay Carole!
On Sunday of this week, we were doing laundry -- we had kind of a backlog from having been out of town and from not having done a lot over the week between Christmas and New Year's -- when suddenly, our dryer just stopped. One second it was running, the next it wasn't. We checked that the outlet was still supplying electricity -- it was -- and I said "well, damn."
Carole got online, spent quite a while researching precisely what model of dryer we really had (it's a dryer sold by company A but actually built by company B and it was the videos for company B's dryers of a completely different name that she actually needed), found videos and help pages that showed her what the problem might be, and then she disassembled the living heck out of that dryer. I should have taken pictures. When all was said and done, it came down to two fuses: one that she thought was the culprit, and one that actually was the culprit. She had me come down to use stupid-male-brute-force to yank the first fuse out and was bummed when it tested intact and working, but further research and digging turned up another fuse deep down inside and that fuse was the one that had burned out. The fuse was a heat sensor that was supposed to burn out if the dryer was getting too warm, so as part of Carole's efforts she extensively cleaned the dryer duct and vacuumed the wazoo out of all the parts inside the dryer and around it and behind it. Her theory is that it wasn't getting good circulation and hence, became too warm.
Carole instructed me to spend Monday visiting every store in the county that might sell replacement fuses for dryers and I said "Uh huh." I knew that if I called and described the part I'd probably get someone who'd say "Yeah, sure, we have that" just to get me off the phone and then I'd get there and find that they had no such thing. It turned out to be something we could order from an appliance parts superstore online for about $20 as part of a little kit which, it turned out, we needed in order to install it. And they had the part here on Wednesday afternoon.
Last night she went down and put the fuse in, reassembled the dryer, plugged it back in, had me securely reattach the duct from the wall to the back of the dryer (confusingly, she said "you're really good at this kind of thing" and then stood back smiling as I pathetically tried to use duct tape to prevent any chance of the duct ever coming loose), and then ...
She started the dryer, and it worked absolutely fine.
That's one extremely expensive diagnostic repair visit and one followup visit (to install a $20 set of parts) we won't be calling our local appliance repair shop to schedule! Hats off to Carole!
