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I have a 25 year old KitchenAid washer that’s starting to leak around the motor. It’s a stainless hulk otherwise with some rust on the enamel exterior.
This is why we can’t have nice things…. The replacement kit for the motor and it’s an easy $100 more than the low end washers.
Why are we doing this still? Why are we tolerant of an economic system that makes waste? It’s time for right to repair laws in the US. We need to stop feeding the corporations and landfills. I have a 99% serviceable machine here…
I spent weeks trying to find a replacement and it's not there. Materials and values have shifted so much over the life of the old appliance that it would easily be twice what it was worth new. Not just that our money is worth significantly less that it was in the late 90's but the materials going into construction have shifted with priority being on ephemeral novelty such as Smart Home goods over durability or even toxicity. I don't want a washer with a plastic tub. I don't want to keep bathing my dishes or the down stream water treatment with the chemicals that off-gas and bake out with every hot cycle wash.
We're dead set to ride the ride till the end it seems. Death by consumer culture. The machines were supposed to lift us up our of the drudgery, but they ended up another class war tool. The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 forced running power to the more rural areas of the Unites States. It's almost impossible to imaging an un electrified world and what that meant in human labor. Imagine you have no way to cook but burning solid fuel. Wood or coal it needs constant replenishing and maintenance. You'll be hauling fuel or cleaning ash either way every day several times a day. You'll be at risk of fire for having to kindle this, you'll have to wait for it to warm the stove. You'll have dim light in your home from candles or lamps or noxious fumes if you want a carbolic generator. Wearing clean clothes? Are the carpets clean? How's the refrigerator running, need some ice? Ever seen a Maytag motor and their cute little clam shell on a flex pipe exhaust? Ever seen an Icy-Ball and wondered how brave you were as you had to place the steel ball over a fire to reboil the ammonia inside it used as a coolant?
That wasn't even 100 years ago.
We were liberated by our technology, and what have we done with that liberty?
I've spent the past 9 years living off grid in a yurt in the mountains of central Vermont. All of my heat, hot water, and cooking is powered by firewood burned in my wood cookstove for about 7 months of the year. During the other 5 months, I cook, heat water, and cool my home with solar power. My wife and I harvest all of our firewood from our land or take already down trees from our neighbors and spend a great deal of time throughout the year bucking, splitting, and stacking all the wood needed to power our home. Our water is gravity fed into our stone cellar from a spring just uphill of the yurt, and I haul it upstairs everyday in 5-gallon buckets. Likewise, I catch all of the graywater from our sinks and clawfoot bathtub in containers and haul it outside each day to our graywater pit. We use a humanure composting toilet system in the house, which fills a great many buckets that we dump into our compost pile on the weekends and cover with hay. This pile then produces an enormous amount of fertilizer for our gardens each year. And when it comes to yard work, I keep the grass mowed around my house with a human-powered push reel mower, an electric weed whacker (charged using solar power), and a good old fashioned scythe for my field.
If you are willing to move to a fairly remote, rural place and build a homestead, I'd say it is still possible to live a somewhat low-powered, low consumption, simple life. But I'm not gonna lie. It involves a lot of physical labor each day, each week, and each season to keep everything running smoothly. On the other hand though, when flooding, ice storms, and strong winds knock out the power in my town throughout the year, I'm never affected. My power is consistent and reliable (although rationed by the weather). And my phone and internet service runs through satellite dishes, which are also remarkably reliable. There's quite a lot of value in building something resilient, even if it does require regular work to maintain.
You hit the nail on the head. Our entire society has been captured by corporate interests and it seems literally nobody can change it. Even our leaders seem largely powerless in the face of corporate domination. That's the problem with a headless system - nobody can steer the boat away from the waterfall.