We moved into our Olive Street house in 1993, shortly after Bill and I were married. The house was built in 1972, and the appliances had seen better days. I reckon, however, they were not the original. I’m basing that thought on the fact that they were white rather than avocado or brown. Perhaps the original owners were just able to see into the future and knew that burnt orange, brown, and avocado appliances were fads and not likely to ever appear again. (On the other hand, our upstairs bathroom housed a green sink and tub.)

One of the first things we did was replace all of our kitchen appliances, including the dishwasher, rangetop, both ovens, and the refrigerator. They were top of the line at the time. In the thirty years that followed, we had to replace the dishwasher and the fridge. The others still worked fine, though the ovens had to be tweaked on a couple of occasions. I held my breath, because double ovens seemingly don’t come in that size anymore. We replaced the white appliances with white appliances. White was the way to go in 1993.

We operated on what Bill and I called the WWWD, which stood for What Would Wilma Do. Wilma, of course, was Bill’s mother. She was not a tightwad, but as long as something worked, she kept it. When Bill’s dad was still alive, if something broke, he fixed it, and they continued to use it. My favorite example is that when Wilma moved into her independent living apartment in the mid- to late 2000s, she still used the original toaster that she and Rex had received as a wedding present. He had repaired it on numerous occasions, and it still worked fine. “Why would I need a new toaster when this one works perfectly?” she would ask her kids.

It did finally break down, and there was no Rex to repair it, so she bought a new toaster. It never worked quite as well, because new appliances don’t work as well as their sturdy ancestors. Why? Because they are all finicky computers rather than workhorses.

With Wilma in mind, we kept all of the appliances we bought in 1993 unless they stopped working.

We now have state-of-the-art appliances in our new apartment. They aren’t top of the line, but they are new and fancy-dancy, at least to me. Having had limited ability to use all of them, I’m basing this on the amount of beeping and chiming they all seem to do. Both my washer and dryer have little ditties they play, all which mean something: my door is ajar, I’m ready for fabric softener, I’m all finished, the clothes are all dry to your liking, do you really think you need that second Tootsie Roll.

The microwave is like another member of our family, at least based on how much communication it attempts. It communicates way more than my son Court ever did. I have little doubt that what it’s saying is something along the lines of were you raised by dinosaurs? We are struggling with understanding what we are supposed to do to get it to reheat our cups of coffee. We would tap 30 into our old microwave, and it would reheat the coffee for 30 seconds. Easy Peasy. Our new microwave requires us to provide a great deal more information than our golden oldie. Are you reheating leftovers? Perhaps you’re wanting to make some popcorn? Should I defrost those chicken thighs? What it does do, however, is beep and chime.

We will undoubtedly keep these appliances until — as they say here at Wind Crest — you leave for whatever reason.