Out with the Old, Please?

Before I visited my hometown this past month I had to ask my husband to promise me that he would not do three things while I was gone – buy or sell ANY large appliance, house or car. Turns out he was planning to buy a new washing machine to surprise me, and with good reason.

We did need a new washing machine, so when I got back, we went down to our new mall near our house and checked out what they had. We had already shopped around a little and pretty much knew what we wanted. We decided on a pretty big and pretty nice washer, since we figured we won’t be buying one now for about 15 years. The old washer was the one my roommate and I bought used when I first moved here. More than one person had compared the sound it emitted to a jet engine taking off. I always felt really bad for our neighbors. It also started leaking water out the bottom recently. We could have gotten that fixed, but I wanted to get a quieter, larger washer anyway, so this was a good excuse, you see.

The new washer was delivered right on time and we promptly began our washing. However, there was still an elephant in the room. Our old washer was now firmly planted in the middle of our bathroom. We had arranged for a used appliance place to come pick it up. In fact, we had arranged two, knowing that at least one of them would lie to us and not come when they said. After a week of calling and stopping by both shops every day, and about 27 lies later, we got the truth – it’s student move-in season, and there’s no way we’ll get around to picking up your old washer before October. Thank you very much.

Enter plans B and C. Plan B was for us to just haul the washer down two flights of stairs ourselves and set it out on the street, hoping that someone would come by and take it, which they probably would have. However, my mother-in-law rightfully pointed out that we would probably injure one or both of our backs doing that, and then we would pay a hospital bill just to get rid of an old washer. Good point. On to plan C.

Here there is a lovely occupation called a “Scrap Collector”. These guys go around either with a truck or just a bicycle or hand cart yelling out that they’ll take our old scrap metal. They usually come by on weekends and a few evenings a night. Except for last week. Not one single scrap collector came by in 10 days. We even had a false alarm when my husband sprinted outside only to find he was chasing a melon seller. “Melon” and “scrap metal” can sound surprisingly similar when you’re desperate. We were in a really bad state, jumping at every sound of yelling in the street, hoping it was the scrap collector. Then, when all hope was lost, our big moment came. We rounded the corner into our neighborhood, and lo and behold, a scrap collector with his hand cart had stopped to buy some veggies. We screeched to a halt, my husband jumped out of the car and ran to the vegetable stand. I’ve never been so happy to see a scrap collector in my life. He said yes, he wanted the machine, so he came to our house, looked it over, and even gave us a few bucks for it! My husband helped him carry it downstairs, and we were free! In the future, we’ll make sure the people who bring the new machine take the old machine as well. I guess you can demand that. We thought we had it covered, but you just never do know. To top it all off, we’ve seen about 5 scrap collectors on our street in the past 3 days. Ain’t that always the way?