Woe Is Me And My Dryer

You remember this past summer when I had my endless dryer issues? I was living like Ma Ingalls for the majority of the summer. As much as I love getting back to my roots and doing things the old fashioned way and saving the environment at the same time, I'm just not that kinda gal when it comes to laundry. I have enough laundry as it is and line drying it just extends it out further. It looks like I may have to pull myself up by the boot straps and line Christmas ribbon dry again.

I'm not sure what the deal is. She was working like a champ all the way up to the very day we moved. Hubs had to change out the plug as the original was three prong plug and this outlet takes a 4. Somehow while he was trying to change it out he broke the screw off or something and we had to have a electrician come and fix it.
Now I'm not saying it was the electrician or Hubs but somehow now it takes triple time to dry my clothes. We even had Mr. Electrician dude come out again as we thought maybe the plug isn't right after all. He of course showed me all their nifty tests to make sure enough power was going through and it appears it is. His theory: "it's probably a heating element."

We've already replaced the motor and I believe another heating element this summer. This dryer should be like new. Sigh.
Hubs decided we should check out dryers. This dryer is barely 4 years old, I thought these things are supposed to last a good 10-15 years? We check out "Good Purchase" as it's the closest appliance/computer store we have around here. I felt like I was going to a car dealership. The blue collared vultures swept in and started drilling us on what we wanted in a dryer. Drying clothes is always the top thing on my mind. I did mention that a front loader that steams is every house wife's dream. Yeah those puppies are not cheap. The vulture did intrique us with the thought that it takes half the normal time to dry clothes than the old standard kind. Plus the whole steam and sanitize mode along with the drying rack. Oh yeah the bells and whistles.

Hubs then decided well if we get the dryer it wouldn't be right not to go ahead and get the washer too. Because the washer supposedly does all these neat things like separate the colors and whites for you and start up a load on it's own..or not.
A funny thing happened while we were hemhawing around deciding what to do. A lady was also looking at dryers and piped up that she loves her cadillac of dryers and the steam mode gives your clothes that crisp fresh from the dry cleaners feeling and that you really should just go with the ones with steam in cherry red. Interesting. Why is this lady trying to sell us a dryer when she doesn't work there and why is she even looking at dryers if hers is working perfectly fine?

We decided to hold off for now on dryers and washers. Right now I have a load of towels, a fairly small load for me, it's been in the dryer since around 1:30 and is on it's third rotation and they are still damp. It's back to ribbon drying for me.