When we were first married we lived in a second hand mobile home, then we moved to Vancouver and lived in an apartment and when we moved to the Crowsnest Pass we bought a new mobile home.
All of these homes had the kitchen appliances included.
In 1983, we moved to Saskatoon, Sask. and bought our house.
Buying your first house can take all your money so we decided to go second hand with the appliances.
In the mid 1990’s these appliances started to have problems so we bought new ones.
Shopping for appliances then was very different then it is now.
We didn’t have all kinds of stores selling them; the hardware store just sold hardware stuff, and most furniture stores just sold furniture.
The big department stores were where you went to get your fridge and stove.
We went to Sears. The appliance section had a row of white fridges facing a row of white stoves.
We did the ‘eeny meeny miny moe’ thing and a few days later our new appliances were delivered.
It is now 2021 and that stove is making strange noises and they are getting louder every day so I can’t put it off any longer. I have to go shopping.
There are a lot more stores selling appliances now and you could wear out your shoes checking them all out but technology comes to the rescue for that.
I got online and started my search.
What a difference 20 plus years make!
A stove is no longer just a stove. You can have all kinds of things going on with it.
You can have a nice smooth top and heck let’s stick an extra burner on there too!
You can have a plain oven, or a convection oven, two oven elements or three, and even a hidden element if you want.
And the digital control panel, we won’t even go there!
I just want it to boil my potatoes and bake my cakes.
The fridges were even worse.
Single doors, double doors, french doors, freezer on top or freezer on the bottom.
One even had 14 cubicles with separate cooling controls for each if you had the smart cooling system. No thank you!
My smart TV is still trying to teach me things – I do not need my fridge to start that too.
On top of all this, COVID-19 is causing all kinds of delivery problems for all those big stores.
My brain was getting fried!
I phoned our small local furniture store and told him I really needed help. We had both the fridge and stove picked out and three days later the stove was in my kitchen and the fridge was on order in 10 minutes!
by Lois Perepelitz
