Major household appliances

They don't like me. We recently survived the great refrigerator catastrophe of 2008, but it seems that we will soon be moving on to other appliance tragedies. (I am happy to report that due to an error in my owner's manual, Maytag fixed my frig for free.) Now, it seems the garage door, the vacuum and the dryer are in competition to see which will die next. The garage door has been resurrected several times already. Again, I think we are cursed, seeing as this house is a mere 2 1/2 years old. The vacuum has been disassembled and reassembled many times in efforts to extend it's life. It's getting close to 4 years old now. I don't think that's old for a vacuum, but with my rotten luck, it'll die soon too. I thought I was doing good, spending a whopping $250 on that vacuum. I figured it would last me ten years or so. Silly me. The refrigerator man broke down the expense of refrigeration for me. If we'd had to pay to fix the fridge, or have it replaced, we would be paying around $800 a year for refrigeration. That's not pretty! On to the dryer. Now, I must say that the dryer has lasted us nearly ten years. That's pretty darn good. And every time it starts having issues, if I talk to it nicely, it shapes up and behaves itself for several more months. So I am hopeful that the dryer will outlast the vacuum and the garage door.

The moral of all this nonsense? Homeownership is expensive because it requires you to own things that break. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I wish we lived in the days when you bought an appliance and you died before it did!