We have an emotional relationship with our appliances. It may sound ridiculous but think of the people around you and their emotional attachment to their clothes.

A friend of mine who is pregnant not only craves odd food combination, but the scent of Tide, in fact, she keeps a decorative bowl of it on her coffee table, guests think it is room freshener, but in reality it is laundry soap. Another example I can think of, off the top of my head is when a friend came home from Iraq the first thing he wanted upon homecoming was for his Mom to do his laundry because he “couldn’t do it right” when he tried to do his own wash. I think it is amazing how a couple of home appliances can hold such an emotional response.

So how do we keep these beloved machines working up to par? Lately I have found out that many people mistreat their appliances without knowing that what they are doing is wrong. One major offense is too much soap. We learn most of our habits at an early age, most of the time from a parent or grandparent, well, nowadays appliances need far less soaps and detergents then they once did. I recently saw a statistic that reported that most people used 10 or more times the amount of laundry and dishwasher soaps. That is money that is simply being washed down the drain if not soaked into your fabrics. Also, if one laundry fabric softener sheet is good, seven isn’t necessarily better, in fact using too many of those little sheets can gum up the dryer. Another common area of mistreatment is the lint trap. Most people know to clean out the lint trap in the dryer with every use, but most people don’t clean the inside of the vent. It is a good habit to get into to clean the vent every 6 months or so or every time that you change your smoke detector battery. You clean the vent by buying a brush that looks kind of like a big bottle brush and is available at any hardware or home improvement store.

A few years ago the lines on the laundry soap caps were changed to adapt to new appliance needs and detergent concentration. Were you aware of the change, or have you been like me and using the same amount blindly for years because it has become such a habit. This is a concern for the dishwasher, too. Too much soap can lead to cloudy glasses and everyone wants their drinking glasses to look clean. Loading the dishwasher properly can make your dishes come out cleaner, everyone has their own way of doing things, but there are a few resources online that outline their way. A few general rules of thumb to go by include putting the dirtiest dishes toward the center and bigger objects towards the back so they don’t block other dishes. There are other things to keep in mind with your kitchen appliances such as when using the self cleaning function on your oven, don’t wait until the day before Thanksgiving because if the oven is going to have a problem, it will have issues during the self cleaning cycle.

Author Bio: “Your” Money Matters, by Carl Hampton From the Author of “From Credit Despair To Credit Millionaire.” http://www.CarlHampton.com

Category: Advice
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