I am blessed with a Hubby that is very handy and can fix almost anything. He’s saved us thousands of dollars in various repairs and service calls over the years. He’s installed lights, beadboard, tile and a toilet in our current home. He can fix anything that could ever conceivably go wrong with a computer. He always has extra bits and leftover pieces of things from previous projects and can usually fix things without even having to make a hardware store run, because he usually has “just the right” screw, glue, widgit or wire to complete a repair in his little workshop corner of the garage.
A couple of weeks ago, our fancy-dancy, and relatively new, washing machine decided to get snooty on us. It has all kinds of safety and energy-saving features and will do things like stop agitating if the lid is opened or annoyingly drain all of the water if the cycle is stopped unexpectedly. The problem recently, however, was that the sensor/switch that tells the machine whether or not the lid was open was malfunctioning, so it wouldn’t start a wash load because it thought the lid was open, when it was, in fact, NOT. Luckily, my aforementioned Handy Hubby was able to rig up a solution. I don’t ask questions about Hubby’s solutions; I’m just grateful. It’s a little like seeing sausage being made; you’ll be a lot happier about the end result if you don’t know a lot about the process (although I would be very surprised if Hubby’s “fix” had NOT involved duct tape and maybe possibly Gorilla Glue).
As you may have read, we had a laundry CATastrophe recently. Predictably, the washing machine chose the precise moment when it was most needed to do a repeat of its previous snootiness and the lid sensor decided to stop working again. Again, I cajoled Hubby into service. He diligently worked on it for quite some time before announcing that his previous “fix” wasn’t working this time. He said that he would need to order a replacement sensor switch and that it wouldn’t arrive for about 5 days. “5 days?!”, I said. “What will I do with all of urgently-in-need-of-attention laundry???,” I panicked. “Not to worry”, Hubby said, “I’ve got a temporary solution rigged up so that you can wash stuff until the replacement switch arrives from the parts department.”
This is what he came up with:
Standard-issue light switch.
It works perfectly.