As most of you know no story of mine is ever short and this one is no exception and the cause of a sleepless night.
What happened? Well, I'll tell you as it had to do with our relatively new high efficiency washing machine. In fact, this top loading Kenmore washer was a replacement due to a recall of its predecessor, a Samsung that we had for less than 6 months. The recall had to do with its part of its high energy rating due to the powerful spin cycle that left clothes virtually dry. The intensity of the spinning drum tended to blow off its top in the Samsung equivalent. Oops, an excellent reason for a recall, right?
Suffice it to say this homeowner didn't want to go machine shopping again but certainly wouldn't risk the possibility of a blowing up washer. We didn't feel comfortable replacing it with a different model by the same company and paying more/ getting a lesser model. (You remember the stink about their one model of cell phones catching on fire and our 2 year old 49" Samsung flat screen tv had just died 2 weeks past its warranty. Suffice it to say, we decided on a similar model but in the Kenmore series made by Whirlpool.
I hate to admit it but it was this spinning cycle that caused my sleepless night. Upon removing the done wash last night, there sitting in the inner ring of the floor of the drum was something shiny protruding. 
Since I am vertically challenged and these new larger drums are deep, I pulled over my little step stool, doubling over to reach the visible edge of the quarter. It wouldn't budge. First I tried tweezers, alas no grip and I didn't want to ruin my favorite tweezers anyway. After a trip to the garage for the needle nose pliers, little progress was accomplished as I tried once again yanking at the stubborn coin. If anything I was making things worse as slipping off the edge of the coin was sharpening its edge and would now snag clothing for sure.
As I looked more closely, I discovered a smaller coin piggybacked with the quarter. No wonder it wouldn't move. I was exhausted from my efforts and headed to bed. Maybe Natureman could try to remove it in the morning.
I'm the early riser in the End of the Rainbow Valley and I was determined to fix the washer problem so I could run a couple of loads of wash before Sleeping Beauty arose. I decided to google the Kenmore series and see if anybody else had issues of stuck coins. Of course, the first articles were about which service man to call. Forget that, we live in the boonies and service calls are a pain and costly. So idea number two, go on youtube and type in removing coins from a washer.
There Mrs. Buck W.R. Weezer had a different model machine but the same problem coins in that inner ring. Her suggestion was to press down on the inner ring and just flip the coins out. Well wouldn't you know the inner circle did lower when pressed but I had these two coins snugger than a bug in a rug.
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| nickel piggy backing with the quarter |
I covered the quarter's edge with a rag and used the needle nose pliers to pull it as I pushed the inner circle down and out it came, the second push down I could pull what turned out to be a nickel.
Gee, I sure wish I had thought to look on youtube late last night before I lost sleep over the issue.
Whether Mrs. Buck W.R. Weezer is her real name or not doesn't matter as she is my hero. If she sends me her address, the thirty cents is hers. Just be careful the quarter is a tad rough on the bottom edge.
You've got to watch this youtube video as I think you'll agree this woman needs to have her own show : Coin removal
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