Fixer-Uppers

Yesterday we had our first toy that was flushed down the toliet. There have been a couple close calls before, but I've always been able to save it. Yesterday I was spraying off a dirty cloth diaper and had just pushed the handle to flush the toliet when out of nowhere the Little Guy comes and flings a toy (smallist star-shaped shape-sorter thingy) right into the bowl of the toliet. As the toliet was already flushing (and I was holding a dripping diaper) there was no way I could prevent it  from going down. I hoped that it was so small that it would just go down, but apparently not. My husband tried plunging the toliet last night, but it's still not working correctly, so we're going to be heading to Lowe's or something because he's going to be taking off the toliet and trying to fish out the toy. =P

About a year ago (I'm guessing here), our washing machine broke. We'd had a REALLY OLD one that seemed like it was going to die and we'd traded it with my MIL for a nice front-loading machine that wasn't too old. Well... it died. I paid a guy $55 to come out to tell me that it wasn't worth fixing.

Sooo... since we didn't have the money to go buy a new one, I got on Craigs List and bought a washer and dryer for $200. We didn't need the dryer, but the people were moving and needed to get rid of both, so I said if they'd knock off $50 (they were originally asking $250) we'd take both since the dryer needs a new heating element. The plan was to replace the heating element (since we'd done that before with one of ours) and then re-sell it. Uh... still sitting there.

Well, last night my husband was doing laundry, went out into the garage and realized that there was a weird smell. I thought it smelled kind of like something that's too hot. Anyway... it was the washer. Soooo.... now I'm trying to decide if I want to bother with paying some repair guy to come out again to tell me its junk OR just bite the bullet and go buy a new one. Looks like Sears and Home Depot are having a couple sales, so I may just end up doing that. I'm getting kind of tired of deal with these used ones!