Washing Machines

I could�ve bought white ones, but the LG TROMM red washer and dryer look like they have improm metal flake red paint and made me think they also had a V8 Hemi and a four on the floor on them. (You can prolly tell I was a teenager in the 60s…lol) I looked at Sears front loaders and others, but the large size of tub on the LG washer and the sort of amazing differences between the LG set and my old 1970s harvest gold washer and dryer, which still work fine, I should add, but the washing machine tub began recently to chip its porcelain and cut some of my knits…

We purchased our washer 2 months ago from Lowe’s and paid $798 plus tax. Lowe’s was running a appliance promotion where we also got a $75 Lowe’s gift card after filling out and mailing the rebate form. We also got free delivery (reimbursed by a separate rebate form also).

I love this machine. It replaced a 15 year old Whirlpool that had gotten so unreliable and creaky that I couldn’t use the regular spin cycle without the machine taking a long walk across the laundry room as the floor shook, etc. Really annoying.

When my husband and I found out we were pregnant, we decided to buy a washer for our apartment in anticipation of increased baby laundry, including cloth diapers (we try to be environmentally-responsible). Also, we thought we could save money over time ($2 wash and $2 dry in our building!), and also that it would make our lives easier since the last wash in our laundry room is 8pm.

We extensively researched washing machines with the following criteria:

1. portable

2. hooks up to regular sink

3. runs on standard household 110V outlets

4. quiet

5. affordable

This is the greatest laundry experience of my life. Very dramatic, I know, but I had never really liked doing laundry or any other kind of cleaning, and I truly enjoy it now. I have an entire workstation with folding table, drawers and magnets to hang things on the side of the machine.

After two weeks, I’m fairly happy. Just found out that I can use the delicate cycle to get more water into the wash cycle.

Here’s some of the things I don’t like, but maybe I just need to figure out a workaround:

1. My wife likes to pre-soak her white washcloths. She missed a pre-soak cycle. Is that the same as pre-wash?

2. loads with large items like wet towels may not settle evenly, resulting in multiple attempts at the spin cycle and adding extra time to the wash. If the towels don’t balance within several spin attempts the washer gives up and you are left with wet heavy clothes that take much longer to dry. There is no button for a spin-only…you have to rinse%26spin to try again, and there is no assurance that the next attempts will succeed.

3. This is a characteristic of all front loaders I expect, but washing heavy items of a certain size almost guarantee failure of the spin cycle. For example, if you have a couple of small cotton throw rugs like the kind you might find in the bathroom, they fall into the bottom of the tub and can’t distribute themselves into a balanced load.

Watching this machine wash clothes is like watching a ballet… so graceful, so gentle! I can’t believe I am using these words to describe a home appliance, but this machine is truly amazing.

17 yr old Hot Point washer finally sprung a leak in the basin, so we decided to ditch the dryer too and get the pair.

At first, I was skeptical about LG because they are not a traditional name in US appliances, though I suspect that will change over the next five to ten years. There were not a lot of reviews online, and the ones I found were mostly love fests, with a horror story here and there.

I bought this Fisher %26 Paykel washer and dryer about a month ago. It is wonderful. You can use it on HE or traditional wash. It has every imaginable cycle setting. If there’s a cycle you need that it doesn’t have, you can just create your own by changing the settings of a cycle and saving it. I have been using Tide HE powder and the clothes for my family of 5 come out very clean. It is so easy to use. You just put your items in and tell the machine what you are washing. It calculates the water temperature, water level, whether to use HE or traditional, etc. There are settings for everything including sheets, comforter, sleeping bag, shoes…everything.

We needed front load stackables to do what we wanted with our laundry room. Things we needed to consider were that it would be for a main floor and that my wife does quite a few loads of laundry a week to keep up and so large capacity and relative short wash/dry time was important. We also wanted quality and a company with a good reputation.

My wife and I just bought a spacemaker and we are very pleased with our purchase. We just moved into a condo and didn’t have the space for a regular size washer and dryer. We were able to put the spacemaker in a closet. The SpaceMaker’s controls are easy to use, and our clothes come out clean from the wash. The dryer works well too. The only thing is that you have to empty the lint screen after every load, but that’s okay. We are very impressed with this machine, and would highly recommend it. We paid $800 for it at a discount appliance store.

I originally purchased my Calypso washer four years ago. I purchased it after researching washers and finding a favorable review from consumer reports. I liked the top loading feature, the way it looked, and that it was energy efficient. It claimed to “use less water and clean clothes better than the usual top-loader”.

I never noticed a distinguishable difference between they way the Calypso cleaned my clothes compared with my previous Maytag top-load washer. (That washer and drier was sold with our house when we moved). I did notice right away that the Calypso washer was very noisy! (My laundry room is right off the kitchen, and is in close proximity to the main living quarters). This noise is quite a bother, but I assumed that most washers would be this noisy and chose to live with it.