Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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We’re getting a new High Efficiency front load washer dryer set

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My husband and I spent a lot of money this past weekend! We finally bit the bullet and bought a new washing machine and Dryer – High Efficiency models no less.

Not that we can really afford new appliances!

As you might remember our ancient washing machine broke down in August (along with a few other things in the house) much to our dismay. We couldn’t afford to replace the washing machine so we’ve been taking our laundry to a nearby laundromat for the last five months.

Two things happened that caused us to decide to make this big purchase.

One – my husband got a call from the bank last week. Apparently he’d used his banking card at a store that was being investigated for debit card fraud so they’d limited his card and wanted him to come in and get a new card. While he was talking to someone from the bank on the phone he found out that he was pre-approved for a personal line of credit. Since we’d never taken out a line of credit for our house we decided to accept the personal line of credit that the bank was offering. Not really intending to use it, but it’s nice to have just in case something happens like the furnace breaks down or something.

Two – once we had the line of credit we thought – “hey, the stores are all having January clearance sales right now … maybe we should look at washing machines and see if we can get a deal?”

So I spent a few days last week checking out all of the major stores that sell appliances in the Toronto area and did some research on washing machine brands. I eventually found a great deal on an Inglis HE washer and HE dryer set at Leon’s. $999 – can’t beat that price, especially for High Efficiency washers and dryers!

We couldn’t go to the store on Saturday because Chris’ parents were visiting, plus in the morning he helped a friend from work move … so first thing on Sunday we were off to the store. Now usually when a sales person approaches me in a store I start looking around for the nearest exit signs but this time we were interested in talking to the sales people about their washers and dryers – we wanted to find out if they’d had any complaints or returns for the models we were interested in and just as importantly if they had any in stock! LOL

Do any of you have High Efficiency washers or dryers? Front loaders? I know that they can have some problems with mold and mildew growing inside them. That was a turn off when I was looking into buying one, but at least we know about the potential problems and what we can do to help prevent them like keeping the washing machine and soap dispenser open when we’re done with a wash, running a cleaning cycle at least once a month, not always using just cold water to wash our clothes and so on.

Our new washing machine and dryer will be delivered this coming Saturday. I can’t wait! This will actually be the first washing machine and dryer that I’ve ever bought. Our current non-working washing machine and it’s matching dryer came with the house. When we moved in we were told that they were about 35 years old … and we’ve been here for 9 years now so that means our washer and dryer are 43 or 44 years old! Can you believe that? They’re older than my husband and I!

Needless to say I’m sure our old washer and dryer are/we’re energy hogs. I also never found that the washer cleaned all that well and the dryer .. well, sometimes we had to put a load in twice to get it dry so I’m sure it cost us a lot more money to use than our new machines will. HE front load washing machines are supposed to use something like 40% less water and 60% less energy and since the washing machine spins the clothes so much better than a top load washing machine the clothes should dry faster in the dryer.

If you guys have any tips for me about HE front load washing machines and dryers I’d love to hear from you. For example – what’s the best HE laundry detergent to use (keep in mind we have very hard water here in Toronto). Do you use a fabric softener and have you had any problems with it causing residue in the machine or dryer? Any tips like that would be much appreciated.

Now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else breaks down. So far so good, but we’ve already had two scares in the last month. On December 20th our furnace started making a really high pitched circular saw sound when it turned on and we had to wait two days for the maintenance guy to come and check it out. It turned out that the bearings needed oiling. Sigh of relief!

Then, last Thursday night after my husband went to bed the TV froze … I thought it was the PVR, but it was the TV because it froze again two more times after I shut the TV off waited a bit and turned it back on … We have DLP HD TV and apparently that TV screen freezing symptom could be a sign that the DM board is failing. Since that night the TV hasn’t acted up at all … but we did take a look at new TV’s when we were in the store buying our washing machine and dryer – just in case! At least we have an idea of what TV models we liked (An LG Plasma or a Panasonic LCD made the top of our list).

I know the death knell is probably ringing for our TV, but I hope that it will keep working for a few more months. Seriously we just can’t afford for any more things to break down!

Anyway .. if you do have an HE front loading washing machine and or HE front loading dryer let me know what you think of it and if you have any tips for using them please do pass them on!





I’m trying out my new steam cleaner with mixed results

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I know that I keep writing about how we don’t have any money to spare, but there was one purchase that I just couldn’t resist making recently.

On Saturday my husband and I went out and got a Shark Steam Blaster. It was on sale at 50% off it’s regular price at Canadian Tire and I’ve wanted a steam cleaner for ages!

I realized how much I needed something to make cleaning the house easier over the holidays. We have a tiny upstairs bathroom – the tub is along one wall and the sink and toilet are on the opposite wall with only about a foot and a half walking space between the tub and sink/toilet combo … so you can imagine how hard it is to clean the tub! Especially when your back has decided to get worse! You can’t even crouch properly between the sink and tub to do some good scrubbing, instead you have to stand awkwardly bent over to give it a good scrub.

So I figured a steam cleaner would make the job easier, plus I could clean the grout and the stainless steel taps much better than with chemicals and all the hard time consuming scrubbing.

I tried the steamer out yesterday in the kitchen. For some reason the last people that lived in our house not only put tiles behind the sink as a counter splash, but the whole kitchen – all four walls have tiles from the base of the wall up to about 2/3’s of the wall height. You can probably imagine how dirty that grout gets!

Unfortunately the steamer didn’t do the miraculous cleaning job that I’d hoped it would. The grout is going to take a lot of scrubbing with the scrubbing attachment on the steamer … or I might have to use some cleaning chemicals on the grout first, rinse it off and then go to town with the steamer. Either way … I’d hoped that it would instantly clean the grout between the tiles in the kitchen and well … it does look better but it’s not sparkling clean.

where the steamer did live up to it’s name was around our sink and on the outside of our stove and fridge. You know how dirt and grime builds up around the edges of the sink where it meets the counter? Well the steamer just blasted that gunk out of there. It also did a nice job on our semi new Danze faucet that we had to replace sometime last year when Chris broke the old faucet.

I’m hoping that if I use the steam blaster on the tile grout a few times that it will gradually get cleaner and cleaner.

Do any of you have an all purpose steam cleaner? If you do – how do you like it and what brand do you have? Does it work well or do you have hit and miss results like I did on my first use?

One thing that I do like about the steamer is that it has lots of attachments. We can use it to steam mop the floors (and walls), squeegee the windows and other glass clean, clean grout and other dirty grimy areas and I’m sure I’ll find some other uses for the steam cleaner.

Happy New Year – did you make any resolutions?

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Happy New Year!

Yes I’m a little late in greeting the new year on this blog, but better late than never!

I hope that you had a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and ended the holiday season with a happy start to the New Year. Thanks to all of you have been regular visitors over the year(s). I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your visits and the thoughtful comments that you leave me.

I generally don’t make new years resolutions, but blogwise, I’d like to resolve to be better about replying to comments and getting out and visiting many of your blogs. I do visit many of them regularly, but I don’t always leave comments, I’ll try harder to leave comments this year. My main problem in not keeping up with this is because we (my husband and I) have so many blogs and websites to maintain that it leaves very little spare time, but I’ll try harder to make the time.

Another, necessary resolution, is that I’m going to try to lower our regular monthly expenses! As I’ve said many times we’re going through tough times and have no money to spare, but if we can lower some of our regular bills it might help a bit.

For example – our cable, internet and cell phone bill all come from the same company. We used to get a 15% discount for having three services with them but they changed that in August and now we’d have to get a fourth service (home phone) in order to qualify for the nice discount. I’m considering moving from the regular telephone line we have with Bell Canada to the Rogers Home phone as it will cut our phone bill in half or more. The rates are just so much better with Rogers … plus there’s that discount, but I don’t full trust the service. So I’ll think about that one for a while longer.

The other thing I’m thinking about is to drop down to a lower cable package to save money. I do like my premium channels. Considering that I’m sick with Crohn’s and there’s times when I can’t do much else other than watch TV (reading while in pain doesn’t work well for me, can’t concentrate) that will be a hard cut, but I think we might have to do it.

Our electricity company, Toronto Hydro, has a new billing system where the price of electricity used is higher during the day and lower at night after a certain time. It’s called “Time of Use” so we’re making an effort to run the dryer on the weekend or evenings when we do laundry and run other appliances that use a lot of energy in the lower cost time periods. We’ve always been pretty good about our electricity usage, but we can probably lower our bill by a few more dollars a month. Maybe ..

I’m also going to go in search of low life insurance rates to see if we can get a better deal. Our rates are already pretty low, but I might find something a little better.

Did you make any resolutions this year? Are they practical and ones that you can probably stick to?

My niece did well at her wedding shower

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I just got back from my nieces bridal shower. Boy am I tired!

My niece did well at her shower. I think she spent close to two hours opening gifts! She got a lot of things that she’d asked for in her Wedding registry like the specific kettle, griddle, toaster, and even towels, bed sheets, dish towels and other kitchen accessories that she wanted.

It’s great that she got so much great stuff. She’s never lived on her own – she went from her parents home to her fiances home so when they move to New Brunswick in the new year she’ll be starting out with her first home. Well .. probably an army base home, but the first one that she can call her own. So she needs a lot of things to help them get off to a good start.

A group of women from her work place got together and bought her several gifts. They were the last gifts she opened and all of them – maybe 8 gift wrapped boxes of varying sizes were wrapped alike. I didn’t know at the time that all of those gifts were from her friends at work. I thought one person had really gone all out!

She seemed really happy with all of her gifts and pleased to see her relatives and friends.

My niece says she enjoys giving gifts too, so once she was finished opening her shower gifts she put all of our names in one of her new bowls and gave out four gift baskets. My sister in law, who was sitting beside me on the couch, won the first gift and then I got the second one! I think people were starting to wonder if our family was going to get all the gift baskets, but as it turned out, the last two were won by relatives on her new in laws side of the family … so it worked out. LOL She also gave a small gift to everyone who attended to party so no one left empty handed. Wasn’t that nice of the bride to be?

My gift basket contained scented tea candles, a floating candle, Chocolate pepper soap (smells great!), nail polish, a skin scrubbie, and body lotion. All very nice.

My niece still doesn’t know exactly when she and her new husband to be will be moving to New Brunswick … I suspect it will be sometime in February. If this shower was any indication, I think she’s going to get a lot of gifts for her wedding too … They’re going to need a big truck to haul all their things to their new home!

Oh and my niece was apparently just promoted at work (Pier1). She’s a manager now … unfortunately there isn’t a store located where she’ll be moving so she can’t transfer her job. I suggested that she take a look at some of the top franchises that might be located near where she’s going to be moving and start apply for jobs soon. Hopefully she’ll be able to find a job!

I have to say that I don’t usually like wedding or baby showers, but I had a good time today. Maybe they’re not so bad after all.

When we renovate our bathroom we’re putting in a digital shower

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The other day I mentioned that we were starting to think about finally finishing our home renovation projects. Well, as a result of this new interest in sprucing up our home I’ve been looking at home renovation sites and checking out new products.

It will be quite a while before we renovate our upstairs and basement bathrooms, but I definitely have some ideas as to what I’d like to do when we do work on them. For instance, I had no idea that such a thing as a digital shower existed! When we redo the basement bathroom I want to put in a whirlpool bathtub and have a separate shower enclosure, and now I’m pretty sure that the shower controls will be digital!

Have you ever heard of a digital shower? If you haven’t and you’ve been thinking of redoing your bathroom, you should look into this new technology. A digital shower allows you to start the water flowing in your shower from any room in the house. Not only that, you can program the temperature that you want the shower water to be set at and you’ll have the perfect shower.

No more adjusting the temperature over and over again as you start your shower. That’s one of the things I hate about our shower. I start the water and it’s always too cold at first, so I add more hot water and then it’s too hot so I spend a few minutes trying to get it just right. I imagine I’m also wasting quite a bit of water as I try to get the temperature just right. If we had a digital shower I wouldn’t be wasting my time or all that water anymore.

You can apparently program a digital shower for each family member. So if one person likes a cool shower and another likes a hot one (I like warm – not too cool or too hot) everyone can program in their personal preferences.

How does it work? Well you turn on the shower and when the desired temperature is reached it will beep or give some kind of visual signal. Some of the units will even even keep the water temperature consistent even if other members of the household are flushing a toilet while you shower.

I’m going to put a digital shower on my wish list for when we get around to renovating our bathrooms.

Does anyone already have a digital shower? If so, what do you think of it?

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