My husband and I have been in the market for a few appliances. We recently bought a water softener and we’re looking around for a new washer and dryer set. What we are finding is that there is quite a premium on appliances with features that we don’t want or need. It may be an age thing, but we don’t feel the need to communicate with our appliances, remotely from our phones. At all.
When the water softener salesperson came over, the final price came in freakishly high, somewhere around $6000. When we scoffed, he said, “Wait, wait, I may be able to bring the price down. Do you need the Wi-fi option?” Uh, no. All that I want my water softener to do, is to do its job of bringing Florida’s ridiculously hard water (We’re talking chunks of brick. Our regular water here feels like some of the beach is being hosed into the house. On a positive note, it is good for exfoliation.) down to something I actually want to drink and to bathe my body in. I don’t even want to have to remember that my water softener exists, let alone communicate with it, on my phone. My husband would ideally like to chuck his cell phone all together, so no, we don’t need the Wi-fi option. Great, because that brought the price down by half.
A sweet young worker (the smart reader, see previous blog), working on renovations here this week, excitedly espoused about the washer and dryer that he and his girlfriend just bought. He grabbed his phone, told Siri to launch the washer app and showed me how he could turn his washer on, from his phone. Hmmmm, when I’m away from my home, it’s by design. I’m escaping my chores. I don’t want to think about my chores at home. That is why I leave my home, from time to time. Escape. Further, I’m not good at turning things on and off, on my phone. I have trouble getting my phone’s flashlight to turn off, when I accidentally turn it on, somehow. I can only imagine the fiasco of me not being able to get my washer to turn off remotely and having to race home from my “Escape from Home”, to deal with the situation manually, which is all that I want to do in the first place.
I never wanted to become an old curmudgeon. When I was younger, I told myself that I would always remain hip and up with the times. Ha! Those are the things you tell yourself, when you are young. I remember my grandfather exclaiming loudly that he would hang up on us, and hard, if he ever heard an answering machine on the other line. When garage door openers first came out, my parents called them the “epitome of lazy.” Of course my grandfather got an answering machine and who doesn’t have a garage door opener these days? So, probably within a few years my water softener and my washer/dryer will be on my phone’s Contacts list. We may even have a Home Appliance group chat with each other. Never say never.
