Fixers and Menders

If you are one or just live with one there is something comforting living with a fixer.  Farmers fix things.  They come by it naturally, generally something they’ve watched their entire lives so it’s nothing to make mention of.  The thought of not fixing something is likely an odd concept.  This carries over from the shop to the house and that is reassuring to me.  Fixers raised me, I’m a fixer and I married a fixer who was also raised by fixers. These people look up part numbers and order pieces to fix the problem.

It’s incredibly frustrating to know by one look that it’s cheaper to buy new.  Rare in our home but none the less maddening to know that something was built so poor and filled with plastic that it really is easier and cheaper to just throw something out and buy a new one. 

Every time I order a part (we are currently waiting on a part for our dryer) I feel like an adult. I’m adulating today because my husband and I took the panel off the back of the dryer and managed to determine the reason the dryer is no longer heating (kind of a funny backstory) should be a simple fix.  Found a dealer in Spokane and the part should be here tomorrow.

Here's the “funny” backstory.  We bought a used Speed Queen washer/dryer set for this very reason.  The reviews were unbeatable because you can order parts for them and because they are made for commercial use they rarely breakdown.  My 2 ½ year old is meandering his way through potty training.  We’re not cramming it down his throat but when the mood strikes to wear underwear or sit on the potty we go with it, on this particular day he decided to go commando. I should have made him put on underwear but I let him go nature boy, after all he was wearing sweat pants, which are pretty much long underwear.   Shortly after, he went number two in his pants.

I could have just thrown the pants away BUT the fixer in me decided I would rinse them out old school in the toilet and throw them directly in the wash and all would be well and I would save the brand new pants from the garbage.  They came out beautiful in the wash and it wasn’t until I was grabbing them from the dryer that I noticed the slightest smell of hot poo so I threw in some dryer balls with essential lemon oil and turned the dryer to fluff/no heat.  Yes, don’t judge.  I was going to lemon scent and fluff the smell out of them.   Mama got no time to be re-washing clothes in the midst of potty training sessions.  There is already a mountain of laundry from calving. Anyhow when I switched over to the no heat fluff… the heat never would come back on after that.  The next load and the next all had to be taken out and dried in front of the wood stove as I somehow “broke” the dryer by flipping the switch…  but as fixers and farmers do, we fix things.   Perhaps this one time throwing out the pants would have suited everyone just fine.

Here’s to the fixers and the menders.  In my humble opinion you are some of the finest conservationists with your repairing ways.