Anna, our renter, is very mature. I’m overripe but that is not the same thing. She knows this about me already.
“Do you happen to have any extra furnace filters?” she asked me once. “I’ll pick some up later, but I’m overdue for changing the filter on the furnace.”
“Furnace filters?” I asked, after a pause for my neurons to line up.
“Yeah. I just noticed I’m a couple weeks late.”
“How often do you change the filter?”
“Four times a year,” she said. “So, do you have one?”
You can actually hear the pushing and shoving when my neurons are trying to line up. They’re worse than first graders.
“What do they look like?”
I have not changed a filter on my furnace since it was installed. In 1996. We did bring someone in to ream the whole system and try to vacuum out the dead mouse in the ducts. That was a few years ago.
Anyway, furnace filters not only sound like something I, as a landlord, should know about, but they also sound like something I should be taking care of myself in the rental house. Or at least supplying.
So Anna shouldn’t be surprised at anything about me at this point. She just came over to use the washing machine because her washing machine is in the basement and there’s currently a big hole where the stairs used to be. She hauled her basket in and all appeared to be going well. Then a noise came out of the laundry room. Let’s call it muted disgruntlement. Everything okay in there?
“Well,” she said, “you have peanut growing in the washer.”
I’m used to finding peanuts in our washer drum. I have pockets full of them for our crow buddies and don’t always remember to take them out. Wait. Growing?
By this time Anna had her hand so far up in the rubber gasket of our washing machine that she could have been turning a breech calf around. She pulled out one sprouted peanut plant, several unidentifiable items, and a damp rodent. “I thought my clothes smelled a little ‘off’ the last time I used your machine,” she said. “So I had a look around.”
Well, I thought my clothes had been smelling a little off myself, but that’s what In-Wash Scent Boosters are for. It never occurred to me that there was anything to be done about it. Nor did I have any idea that the rubber gasket around the drum was something you could stick your hand in. I thought it was totally attached. But the aforementioned crap did come out of it. It wasn’t actually a dead rodent, as it turns out. I think it is a portion of an old sock with a bunch of hair stuck to it. The peanut is totally a thing though.
So I googled all this. Why, you’re supposed to clean out various parts of your washer once a month, as it turns out. Wipe it down. Send a vinegar rinse through it. I went in to do just that. Later I read the beginning portion of the instructions, where it says “If your washer does not have a cleaning cycle, you can do a vinegar wash…”
Huh. Lookit that. There is a cleaning cycle on my washing machine. I should try that out sometime. I kept reading. How long is an HE front-loader supposed to last? 10-11 years, according to the internet, and that’s if you maintain it. Our washer is 26 years old.
Anna’s father Tom has a lot to do with how much basic life stuff she knows and how responsible she is. I wondered, idly, why I hadn’t learned anything about this sort of maintenance when I was growing up, but those were simpler times. We just had the rock, and the river, and the wringer.
“Have you ever met anyone less mature than I am?” I asked Anna, abashed.
“Sure! Definitely,” she said.
“That you weren’t in a relationship with, I mean?”
Silence.
The trouble is, I don’t know what I don’t know. In the meantime, I’m going to see if Anna needs to borrow the dishwasher, the refrigerator, the oven, a cup of electricity, or any of an assortment of power tools. I’m generous that way.
I just found out about the “vinegar wash” this summer! And I, too, have one of those cycles that does it for you. Amazon even carries a little box of the thingies you use.
There’s thingies? I tried to look up how to do the cleaning cycle (that’s as far as I’ve gotten) and couldn’t find anything about my machine, which is older than the internet.
I just bought this washer during the pandemic, when my old one died and could not be repaired. (I detest going to laundramats! As much as it costs to do a load, it wouldn’t take much to recoup one’s money by buying a washer.) It is high tech, although the least high tech I could find at the time. It doesn’t have a cleaning cycle. And I figure… WTH? It’s already washing the clothes. It has a nicely smelling detergent (ZUM patchoulli by Wild Indigo.) Can’t it just freakin’ wash itself while it’s doing the laundry? I would think it was advanced enough to multi-task. Even I manage to wash my hair, my body, and shave my legs, all while in the shower for a relatively short amount of time. I’m CERTAINLY not more advanced than my washing machine! Even my oven, which I purchased about a decade ago, has a steam cleaning cycle as well as a self-cleaning cycle. I use the steam cleaning once a month because self-cleaning is really bad to breathe in, especially for parrots. Can’t be much good for people, either.
Oh please. Don’t even bring up the oven. I’d have cleaned mine by now but I’m using my chisel as a plant stake.
Now I’m going to have to google ‘furnace filters’, as soon as I uncover the furnace from the pile of empty cardboard boxes.
When we lived out in Boring, we bought a new Land Cruiser. 1972, a vintage year. I decided I could do what was called a ‘tune up’…after all, I had two screwdrivers and. a small wrench. When it wouldn’t start after several ‘adjustments’ I called my mechanic nephew in Bend. He drove the three hours, lifted the hood and it started a half hour later. Before he left he admonished me to “Never lift that hood again, Uncle Mike.” I’ve learned just because I can do CPR doesn’t mean I can fix things around the house.
I can now see you hovering over the hood with paddles yelling “CLEAR!”
Murr,
Furnace filters are important! How much dog/cat dander, pollen and dust mite poo do you want to breath in?!!
Well—25 years’ worth so far?
Exactly! We have parrots, which produce profuse amounts of dander. And a fireplace with an insert… but it still produces a lot of ash dust. We change our furnace filter twice a year (only that often because our fireplace does much of the heavy lifting as to keeping us warm.) We also have an air filter in the bird room, which is changed several times a year (as I mentioned… delicate respiratory systems.) Then, there’s the humidifier filter, which is attached to the furnace, because when the furnace kicks in, the air gets so dry. That’s changed twice a year. Then there’s the filter for our fish pond, to keep them alive and breathing. And the filters to keep bad things out of our water, The one in the kitchen is changed every two months. Our shower filter every 6 months. Someone told me about a whole house water filtration system that attached at the meter. But it only filters out sediment, and you still need a kitchen and shower filter for the chlorine. So I said, “NO! Enough shit that we have to keep track of and replace! My calendar is FULL!” (It used to be full of social engagements when I was younger. Now it’s when to change filters or go to my acupuncturist. *Sigh*)
That is so many more filters than I knew existed. I use one coffee filter every day. And that exhausts my knowledge of filters right there.
If our air quality and water quality were better, we wouldn’t need these things. I remember 20 years ago, a neighbor’s son who worked for the water department in whatever department measures the quality of the water said to me, ” whatever you do, ALWAYS filter your water!” And I have, because he seemed damned intense about it!
As to coffee filters… we don’t use them. I have a tea kettle and a French Press. We went through SO MANY coffee makers because they have parts that fail on us. Plus — so much plastic. A French Press has no parts that will fail (unless Paul breaks the glass container) and no plastic touches the coffee itself.
I’ve got a French press but I don’t use it. Doesn’t keep the coffee warm enough to get my second cup out of it.
Nice memory Murr. Not many know the birth year of their washing machine. I keep extra furnice filters for the next forest fire. The store will run out or raise the price.
Weird that we need to think that way now. But you’re right. Hey, I still don’t know where the filter goes. Come on over.
This made me laugh so hard. I am you. My parents were also you. My parents had no idea how to fix or maintain anything in our house. If something wrong, you “called the man.” One time my father replaced the outside handle on our screen door. I was in shock that he actually knew how to do that.
I do know you have to remove the lint from the screen in our dryer but I haven’t figured out how to open up the lint trap so I just bang it until the lint falls out.
Ah! I’ve solved the dryer lint problem. I don’t use a dryer! Also helpful to put moisture in the air in the wintertime, putting my wet clothes on the rack.
I hardly ever used the dryer until my left knee developed arthritis. I used to carry laundry up to the attic to hang (we can’t hang laundry outdoors. Too many trees; too much bird poop.) Now, I just toss it all in the dryer. My delicates, I hang on a rack in front of the fireplace. My knee feels a lot better due to acupuncture, but I don’t like to press things by going up and down stairs if I don’t absolutely HAVE to.
If something WENT wrong…SMH.
Air filters on furnaces- if you have a new 4″ high efficiency ( Merv 11 or better )filter you should replace it at least every 6- 9 months if not more often. If you don’t it can kill your furnace with all the gunk clogging it’s pores….
Yeah, I don’t know what you just said.
When our new furnace/AC combo was installed they installers told me that to make the place hypoallergenic we should us a Merv 13. A couple of years later I called the manufacturer and was told that it would put an undue strain on the equipment to use anything better than a Merv 3. One thing I don’t need is even more strain on the equipment.
Who the hell is Merv, y’all?
I see what you are doing with your last paragraph; lending everything to Anna so it gets cleaned out!
I cleaned my front loader washing machine filter several times a year until I didn’t, now it is jammed in there and I can’t get it out, but the machine still works fine and nothing smells bad. It’s 25 years old now. You know about cleaning the lint filter in your dryer? After every use is recommended as lint is highly combustible.
See “I solved it by not using a dryer,” above.
‘Chiner Bob (rhymes with “sheener” and is short for “machine”). That’s who comes to the house, knows all the kids and their pets, and fixes stuff. Ever-body needs a ‘Chiner Bob! He recently fixed our central vacuum for $146 by cleaning the HIDDEN filter thingy that you cannot see or remember. I thought I was doing OK because I had cleaned out the canister AND the other filter thingy which is the size of a soccer ball and hard to miss. SIGH
If they made a Jiffy Lube for my house I’d do the same thing I do with my car. Bring it in about a year after it’s due for maintenance, listen to them tell me all the things I must do and the things I should do, have them do 80% of them, and leave one thing out so I feel thrifty.
I think the hole has disappeared and now there is easy access to the other peanut farm.
……Maybe the hole is an entrance to Narnia? Of course, right now Narnia is in evil hands “where there is always peanut butter, but no jelly.” Sorry, Murr, fantasy genre geek humor.
I do have two standing wardrobes.
River, the Army used to give a everyone in “Quarters” a half-day every fall to take off and clean all the dryer filter/vent things in our laundry rooms and rake up all the leaves- attendance mandatory but, hey we lived there. They were dead serious about dryer lint fires.
I don’t rake leaves, either.
I have fond memories of when my dad used to burn a pile of them in the fall in CT. It was one of my favorite aromas. Can’t do that here in NorCal. Maybe can’t do that there anymore either.
I’m SO glad it wasn’t a real mouse.
You do have a way with words. Giggle.
I think you are great! How can you possibly be expected to know/remember all that?
You are off worrying about salamanders!
Marcia
p.s. That’s a joke!
Marcia
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