Do y'all remember the days of running five loads of laundry in a day? Flushing once, and not having to flush again to get the rest? A dishwasher that was loud as fuck, but cleaned the damn dishes?
I do. And I'm pissed as hell that those days have gone.
I hate high-efficiency fittings and appliances. I do. They don't do their fucking jobs, and they waste time, electricity, money, and my tolerance for enviro-weenie bullshit.
When my pixie was a toddler (she's going to be fifteen in December!!!), I had to let my second-hand '80s Maytag washer go. I was really sad to see it go: it'd been an excellent washer from the time my in-laws gave it to us, and we'd had it repaired until the repair guy said, "I can't get parts to fix this anymore."
It took twenty minutes to run a wash cycle. Used a full tub of water, didn't lock the lid unless it was spinning so that I could rinse the cup, and got the smells out of everything.
When we replaced it, we got a Maytag. A Bravos. Did you know that the first load, three quarters of the clothes were bone dry at the end? And that it took three and a half fucking hours to run said "washed" load?
That was on normal. That is not normal. Normal was filling the fucking tub, agitating the fuck out of the clothes, building up a huge amount of suds from agitation, then draining, rinsing (with more water, agitation, and a hard spin to get the soapy water out instead of sucking it down through the clothes and re-depositing the residue). Done in 20 minutes or so. Half an hour, if the load was really dirty; an hour if I soaked first.
"Deep water wash" doesn't fill the tub all the way. Just barely covers the clothes, but they're at least all wet and floating. Takes three and a half hours, but the clothes get clean. Ish. The tub lacks an agitator. Which...does make a difference. I've been using that for years, and the enviroweenies can fuck themselves with a cholla for making two loads of laundry take ALL FUCKING DAY. Even the PowerWash setting takes two and a half hours.
Don't even get me started on the dishwashers. I have had dishwashers that ran in under an hour, sprayed water HARD, and pressure washed the damn dishes. Things got clean even without the phosphates in the detergent. My current one? There's a lot of time where nothing's spraying, even in the "express 60 minute" setting, and nothing's draining. It's silent. I just opened it after a cycle, and the first and last of a set of three dirty bowls are still dirty. I haven't looked at anything else yet, but I can tell you that there were three spoons that got left in from the last load, and a leftovers-for-lunch dish that didn't get clean.
I cannot hand-wash things before I put them in the dishwasher. I got the dishwasher because I do not have the energy to hand wash everything I use every day. I don't have the energy to do it, and I can't replenish the energy I spend by eating or by sitting and resting.
What's more, I refuse to wash dishes before I wash the goddamn dishes. I want a fucking dishwasher that WASHES THE FUCKING DISHES. With phosphates in the goddamn soap to make sure it fucking rinses CLEAN.
Toilets. Toilets are fucking terrible. "Oh, you'll use less water when you flush! It's cheaper!"
Okay, first: yes, you use less water per flush. Both toilets use less than a gallon. Both toilets routinely clog, because this house and its septic were designed for a 3.5 to 5 gallon per flush toilet. I fucking hate the spit-of-water to try to push SOLIDS out of the pipes.
Second, on the whole "cheaper" bullshit.
Bitch, I've got a well. I don't pay for water (just electricity, and I have rants there, too).
"But can't you just...I dunno...flush more than once?"
It takes fucking time to refill the tank. By the time I can flush again...the solids have lodged and ain't moving with a bare spit of water.
I want a 3.5 gallon-per-flush toilet. And I'm being told "oh, you'll have clogs! The new ones are better tech that work better!" Yeah, the nay-sayers can go fuck themselves. Again, with a cholla, that has been dipped in a freshly flushed low-flow toilet. The toilets that can get the waste into the pipe, but not all the way to the septic tank. Which...is the fucking problem.
Damn it, I want things that fucking WORK. Not things that promise "efficiency" but aren't at all efficient.
