Wow 30 years...well your right... Bad timing...good luck with the new one!

Must be the season. Our dryer quit working two days before Christmas. Try getting anyone in to fix it the week of Christmas.

Yep, paper plates and plastic forks sounds like a good and viable option.

How awful! Why couldn't that have happened at a better time?!

Drains like to clog up when fixing holiday meals too. Gotta be really careful about that garbage disposal.

My garburaotr conked out 2 weeks before Christmas, but it has ran faithfully for 20 years, so guess its time for a new one. An after Christmas expense will have to wait awhile.

yep, seems things conk out when you need them most.

Like my car heater blower on the ONE night in forever we had freezing fog.

Yep, must be the season. I had my water softner replaced. The old one had done 30 yr of service.

Sump pump was working ... and working ... ongoing ... had to go to the basement and give it a kick to get it to stop (actually, a slight tap with the hand on the outflow pipe did the trick).

Do husbands break out in rashes if they wash dishes?

But - don't forget ... that plastic is made mainly from petroleum ... that took a million years or so to make ... and we've been using it like crazy for ... somewhat less than a hundred years.

Have you noticed how far out to sea, up in the difficult-to-deal with (and risky) arctic, etc. that they're exploring, now? 'Twon't be too long till we run really short, what with more cars being sold in China last year than in the U.S.

Tell your kids and grandkids to get working on alternative sources (so they get less mad at us when the petrol gets in REALLY short supply.

ole joyfuelled ... with the addition of some gasoline ... and furnace oil ... from time to time

I'll join the group of inopportune break downs. My oven went kaput on Christmas day! I do have a second oven and am a nervous nilly right now since I'm having 35 - 40 ladies here on Monday for a Christmas Coffee. I have lots of baking to do tomorrow with fingers crossed that the second oven won't let me down.

I have you all beaten on this one. Years ago, we moved into an 1100 sf condo (bedrooms and bathroom up; kitchen and living area down) on Dec. 22 with a 6 week old and a 2 and 1/2 yr. old. I was having 8 (plus us) for turkey dinner on Christmas. When we were sleeping on Christmas Eve, the hot water tank, located in the living room under the stairs, and having been serviced that day, was left by the serviceman with the drain valve open. We got up Christmas day with 40 gallons of water in our 500 sf of carpeting and leaking onto the kitchen floor. I cooked the dinner. We ate with the carpet soaked. I boiled water on the stove to have hot water to wash dishes. I boiled water to bathe the babies that night. I survived,

Drewsmaga, I can't even imagine that. I'd have been on the phone to the plumber screaming bloody murder. This seems to be the year of inopportune appliance breakdowns, although I was not among them.I can't tell you how many people I know had the water heater die, the furnace give out, the the sink or toilets clog this year. It was usually the day before Christmas or Christmas Day. Maybe it was a conspiracy. My only inconvenience is that the "change oil" light came on in my car and I can't be without it for a day until Tuesday. I only have to make short trips. My son said there is plenty of oil, but it is old. I'm usually good about having the oil changed, but not this time.

My water heat quit about a week before Christmas but it only needed a new burner, thank heavens.

Thirty years! That dishwasher does not owe you a thing.

Appliances *know* when it's the weekend, a holiday, or you are having a party. (Didn't you know that?)

Our December calendar is riddled with plumber calls.

One of our two 50 gal. water heaters died. The plumber piped to the remaining tank while we wait for a single 75 gal. tank to replace it. He ran out of time that day to repair a kitchen faucet and the guest room toilet.

Second trip, he 'fixed' the faucet, but didn't have the right parts for the toilet. Next day the faucet stared leaking from the top AND under the sink. He returned to repair the toilet and said he had to order a part for the faucet. (While awaiting the part -- over Christmas -- I have to crawl into the cabinet to turn off the supply every night and keep a bucket underneath 24/7.)

Supposedly, all will be fixed Monday. (HAH!) We leave Wednesday for Maui -- where I have to get bids for renovating a kitchen and shower bath. House and condo were both new in 2000. Now things are failing in both places at once!

Reiteration of ole joyful's rant re: appliances.

Seventy years ago, they had one-horse-covered wagons going down the street carrying bread, milk and ice. Chop a chunk of ice off of the big block, haul it with tongs to install into top compartment of a wooden box looking much like a modern fridge, dumping the water from a pan in the bottom every three or four days. We folks on the farm kept perishables in dishes in a tub of cold water in the basement.

Sixty years ago, they started building fridges.

Of the fridges built fifty years ago ... many lasted for forty years.

The fridges that they build now last for about ten years.

I've told this story many times in recent years, and about here, many join in the story, with about a third of the responders saying the same three words, "IF ... YOU'RE ... LUCKY!!)!

The engineers can put a man on the moon, but they've forgotten how to build a fridge that'll last for while?

Not quite - they call it, "planned obsolescence" ...

... gotta have the stuff wear out, well, ... "die" ... early, so folks'll buy more stuff, to keep the economy going around, to keep workers working. (Read that, "manufacturers making profits").

Electronic .products have an even poorer track record of early die-ability.

Lets shame them into making quality products, once more.

ole joyful

Your nostalgia is just that - sentimental recollections.

Products that were made 50 years ago or more are ancient junk compared to modern products. For most consumer goods, what's available today is ever so much more capable, efficient, and MUCH CHEAPER than what was available even ten years ago.

Why isn't average quality better? Because people don 't want to pay for it. Do you do your shopping at Costco, Walmart, (fill in the blank) discount house, or do you go to the custom shop in the big city where the upscale stuff is sold?

Mercedes and BMW cars will last 30 years. American cars are cheaper but don't usually last even half as long. How many are sold of which and why?

Memories of the past are sweet but hardly objective.

The other problem is that appliances are, for the most part, made in places that have low income levels. The workers are paid low wages and so lowering the cost of the good. However, when you go to repair said broken down appliance, we are paying in North American wages. That's why the cost of repairs seems to be such a large percentage of the original purchase price and often seems cheaper to just buy new.

I have owned several refrigerators over the past 50 years and it has been my experience that the most failure prone item is the main thermostat, and that is replaceable. The main problem is finding a replacement after the refrigerator is 10 to 15 years old. The company I worked for has made millions of these controls for several different manufacturers. The switch mechanism was the same in all of these, but there were differences in the differential: the difference between the turn-on and turn-off temperatures. No one can agree on what this should be. The other difference was cosmetic. Every maker had to have a different knob. These unnessary differences created a proliferation of designs making it unprofitable for a repair parts house to stock all variants. This is one of the main reasons that repair parts are scarce for applainces over 10 years old.