Things I Love: Appliances and Two More

I'm a couple of days behind, but I have a good excuse reason.  My dryer blew up on Tuesday morning, which is laundry day around here.  With the way I have organized/decluttered the clothing (at least for the girls and me), that has made for an interesting week in our house!

So, first of all, I love modern appliances (when they work).  I mean, think about it -- our ancestors beat their dirty laundry out in a creek on a rock, then hung them out to dry.  They graduated to washboards and washtubs, then very dangerous washing machines.  Now, we have safe, effective machines.  We put in dirty clothes, and get back clean clothes.  They're wet, but most of the time, a dryer is available.  If we don't want the chore of carrying the heavy, wet clothes outside, then bending and hanging them, only to reverse the process when they're dry; we can plop them into a basket, scoot the basket over three feet (or so), and cram those heavy, wet, CLEAN clothes into a dryer, turn in on, then dry them.  The same is true for dishes.  Just plunk them in the magic box, add soap, press a button, and VIOLA, clean dishes!  It's really pretty amazing, if you take the time to think about it.  Vacuum cleaners, cars, refrigerators, freezers, ice makers, and so forth!  Some require more effort than others, but all the same, they free us up from much of the manual labor that our foremothers did.  And to be honest, many women around the world are still doing much of that manual labor.  It's an amazing blessing!  And yet, all too often, I complain about having to fold that laundry, or unload that dishwasher, or clean out the fridge.

So, my next love for the last three days is understanding (and insanely generous) friends.  Two lovely women, when hearing of my misfortune, offered me their dryers.  Wow!  Both have homes-full of children of their own, with their own laundry to tackle, housework to do, and they offered to let me take up their dryers!  I mean, how amazingly generous!

Third, I love parts stores.  I called the local appliance parts store on Tuesday afternoon, gave them the model number of my dryer, told them what part I needed (without a part number), and they shipped it out to me.  It should be here today.  I called the next day, with another broken part, and they had it in stock. The Engineer picked it up yesterday morning.  It's entirely possible that this will be a memory by this evening.

OK, so with all this love, how am I going to turn that around and love those around me?  I am going to try to be more mindful of things around me.  I'm going to try to remember these things are blessings, and that there are those who are (still) doing things "the hard way."  After all, that's really the point of this series anyway...