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I'll take that mixer and raise you a bread machine...
Home's overloaded circuits make for a perpetual game of musical appliances
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Smaller houses are great. This is a mantra that typical, cash-strapped homebuyers sing over and over to themselves when they start looking in the Glen. They tell themselves the same things we, the homeowners, told ourselves years ago when we first set eyes on the surreal, genteel, Robert Kinkaid-style streets and overgrown cul-de-sacs. Smaller is better.
Smaller means you can get the whole place clean in a morning--even the dusting over the fridge--without any help, and have the rest of the weekend to play. Smaller is also more architecturally interesting. Older homes have full-size four-by-fours in the basement, and real two-by-fours in the walls. Older homes have classic lath-and-plaster walls, and most have real honest-to-goodness basements, attics that provide storage, and a space to convert (without a permit) into a kid's bedroom or a guest nook.
Older homes have mature landscaping with full-grown shade and fruit trees. They also have 110 electricity and most of them have (horrors!) a fuse box.
Most of these sweet young things coming down the house-buying pike have no idea what a fuse box is, let alone how to make it work. Many of them will instantly want it converted to "circuits." We did that ourselves, after 10 years of fiddling around out in the backyard, rain dripping down my back (winter) and mosquitoes biting me (summer) while I tried to unscrew every one of those things, replacing each one with a new fuse until all the house lights went back on again--it always happened at night, of course. It was the homeowner's equivalent of trying to make Christmas tree lights work--take out one bulb, plug in the one before it, and if they go on, the bulb in your hand was the bad one!
Unfortunately, no one ever tells the lucky couple that they will forever have to deal with overloaded circuits. Only now, when everything suddenly fails, they can just go outside, open up the box, and start flipping switches back and forth (no matter how you identify them, when everything is black and you are cold and mad, pulling them all is the only way to get the lights back on).
At our house, the circuits involved are everywhere but the bathroom (finally on its own loop), and constitute a mad game of memory. The washer and dryer run fine--but don't use the toaster oven with either of them on, or you blow. The microwave, TV, stereo, water bed and computer are OK, but don't add in the printer or the toaster oven, or you blow. The computer, television, waterbed, washer, dryer, coffeepot and VCR are OK--but don't go near the microwave, toaster oven or printer, or--you guessed it. I sometimes think the smartest answer is just to throw out the toaster oven--but we use it more than anything else, so that's out.
Recently, we added another player into this deadly game of amplified cat and mouse. We bought a used air-conditioner window unit. A wonderful device, and we will no longer spend the heat-wave days skulking off to the movies, begging for play dates with more well-heeled friends or riding around aimlessly in the car until after 4 p.m. when the breeze usually (but not always) kicks in and things get bearable on our covered porch. Now, we live much as Lisa and Oliver Wendell Douglas did out on Green Acres--I need a list of what goes with what to run my house.
My first false step was the microwave with the A/C. I spent 10 minutes fixing all the clocks after I blew that one. Then there was the washer changing cycles--more clocks to reset. Then I found out that there's no way I can actually use the computer while the house is getting cooled unless I want to play solitaire (for some reason card games do not upset the delicate balance of nature we have forged here).
Now I am at that point where I have to think about each step of my day and do a little math before I can proceed. Stuart wants toast? Fine--just shut off the laundry for a moment and pour out the last cup of coffee before unplugging the pot. Done with toast? Don't forget to turn that load of laundry back on to finish before the hot part of the day, or not only will you have a warm house, you'll also get wet pajamas at bedtime. Need to run errands? Great--we can turn off the house and put on the A/C for a two-hour run before we come back and try to live again. And Lord help me if I try to use the Crock-Pot.
This new addition to the electrically charged family has given me one nice thing to say though: With the small size of houses in Willow Glen, you can cool the whole place with a small window unit designed for 1,000 square feet or less. You just can't do anything ELSE at the same time.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
