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I recently got a washing machine for my apartment, a Haier HLP021-WM. It’s! So! Awesome! I got it used on Craigslist for $100, you can get them new from Walmart and other places for under $250. It is a 0.97 cubic feet washer.

I had been looking at more well known brands like Kenmore but with a retail price of $760 for their portable machine and favorable but mixed reviews, I had all but given up. I thought, “If an established brand can’t make a unit that is fairly similarly priced, the cheap one is probably junk.” Wrong was I, young Skywalker!

I just did yet another a load of laundry this morning and it was so easy. I dread going to a laundromat. I dread running out of clothes, having stinky clothes in the closet, letting stains set for weeks on end, spending 3 hours doing a stupid task, but most of all I dread hauling 40 pounds of laundry out of the house and into the car just so I can bring it back a few hours later. Those days are gone. It’s such a simple thing but it makes me so happy.

Oh, and the other essential thing I got with the washing machine from the lady on Craigslist was a small dryer, a Hamilton Beach Quick Dry Garment Drying Station. It works like a champ. It takes 2-8 hours to dry a load of clothes but it’s small, cheap to run (it’s just a fan), convenient and I don’t have piles of drying clothes hanging all over the apartment. She threw it in for $20.

I don’t like smelly laundry soap. I absolutely hate Tide laundry soap. Tide burns my nose in a way not unlike ammonia. I’ve had clothes washed in Tide that after a few hours I had to take off, they were so awful and distracting and headache inducing. There is a guy at a previous job that used Tide (hi Matt Gr!) and if he approached my desk slow enough, I my nose would burn that characteristic Matt Gr smell before I could see him.

I’ve found 2 soaps that I like. Trader Joe’s powdered laundry detergent and All Small & Mighty Free Clear. The liquid soap works better in the Haier washing machine because if the powdered soap has clumped, some of the clumps stay on the clothes. I fixed this problem by straining the powered soap (which I often leave in my clump-inducing humid garage), but I’d rather not have to do that.

(Subject line hat-tip to Scarlett O’hara)