We’ve been doing some research and are getting ready to make a decision on our first purchase for the new home: a washer and dryer. (Exciting, huh?) We were originally thinking we would move the ones we’ve been using in our current home because they’re only 4 or 5 years old and we haven’t had any problems with them, but our buyer wrote them into the purchase agreement and we weren’t really opposed to the idea of not having to move them, so we agreed to it. So, now we’re in the market for some new appliances.

We started by looking at the local Lowe’s and were surprised to find a pretty limited selection. They had some pretty high end machines and some pretty cheap, apartment grade ones, but it didn’t seem like there was much in between. We had better luck at the Sears store, but quickly discovered that we aren’t as “up” on what’s going on in the world of laundry appliances as we’d like to be before making the purchase, so we came home to do some reading. We found a couple of pretty helpful articles in Consumer Reports, but we weren’t that excited about what they had to say.

Apparently, there were some stricter efficiency standards that went into effect at the beginning of the year, so (according to Consumer Reports) our choices now are between reasonably priced top-loading washers that do a marginal job of cleaning the clothes and high priced front-loaders that do a pretty good job. Because the only machines they thought were acceptable performance-wise were so expensive, they didn’t even bother to assign their “quick pick” status to any of them … not entirely encouraging. Maybe we should have thought twice about leaving ours with the house after all …

Kenmore Elite HE3 Washer & DryerGiven that we’re in this situation, though, we’ve got a decision to make. I kind of like the idea of switching to a front loading machine and (if money were no object), I think the Kenmore Elite HE3T washer and matching Kenmore Elite HE3 dryer would probably be on my short list of front loading machines to consider. While there are many negative reviews to be found on any washer and dryer set, there seemed to be some pretty positive reviews of this one as well. One thing that kind of has me concerned is the comment about noise and vibration issues with second floor installations of front loading machines (which we’ll have in our new home). I’m not sure if it’s something to Whirlpool Cabrio HE Washer and Dryerreally be concerned about or just another random complaint that shows up in some reviews but probably isn’t likely to happen for the majority of installations. For a top loading washer, I’m kind of liking the Whirlpool Cabrio HE, although it happens to be a top-loading machine that costs about the same as a front-loading one, so maybe there’s not much gain there. Going with another top-loading machine does take some of the unknowns out of the purchase, but I’ll probably want to do some more reading to make sure we’re not giving up performance for the same price as a front-loading washer.

We still have some time before we have to make a final decision (we need to measure the laundry closet to make sure the models I’ve picked out will even fit in the space and we probably won’t get an opportunity to do that until after we’ve moved in) and then I guess we’ll have to weigh how much we want to spend with how clean we want our clothes to get.

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