Thrift Shop Goodies & New Appliances

During the week I was able to hit a couple thrift stores. I didn't come away with too much, but that's OK. I'm thrilled with what I did get.

October is such a wonderful time to visit thrift stores, because most of them (at least here in Utah) put out a lot of funky and vintage clothing to sell to people looking for Halloween costumes. The below pictures are of a green poly/cotton dress, likely from the early seventies, with dozens of incredible beaded motifs.


You can see the continuous beaded hem above ; the short sleeves were done in the same manner, but the motifs were smaller. Imagine the CQ possibilities!!

And then there were the yellow/green motifs sprinkled all over the front of the cotton/poly dress.
Regular readers will know that I'm a sucker for aprons, particularly vintage aprons. I spotted this little puppy for a song, and HAD to get it to add to my collection. It's a bit soiled, but nothing that some gentle soaking and laundry won't handle.

And speaking of laundry, our dryer went out yet again. We've had it. We've been washing our clothes in the washer and taking them to the laundromat to dry for the last two weeks. Actually, if I had a clothesline and pins, or even enough space and a little ingenuity, I would rather have hung the wet clothes outdoors (which I used to do when we lived in Idaho). But rather than walking down that memory lane, I digress...

We did lots of checking (Consumer Reports and online sources) of customer satisfaction reviews on washers and dryers, and finally ended up purchasing a pair of new front-loading, high efficiency machines. Truly a major purchase!


These are our machines, although we purchased both in white and with pedestals. They're being delivered on Wednesday. In the meantime, I must quote one of the reviewers, because his/her experience mirrors what we've been through over the last year: "Good riddance Maytag, hello GE". I think the "lonely" Maytag repairman is (if our experience is any indication) a very social creature these days....

And our old Maytag washer (6 years old) will go to my son & DIL to assist with all their additional laundry since DGD London has arrived. :-) The 8-yr old dryer is dead (would cost more to fix it than buy its equivalent new) and will go to appliance hell (it didn't make it to heaven).

Before these appliances, I never had a washer or dryer that didn't last at least 17 years. Shoddy workmanship? Planned obsolescence? Cheap parts? Whatever. This time we bought extended service warranties.