Have you ever done any of these most common appliance mistakes?
When it comes to the most common appliance mistakes, some of them may surprise you! It is easy to know that you should not mess around with the electrical panel or try your hand at plumbing if you have never done it and you have a pipe leak. However, when it comes to our devices and appliances, not a lot of us know what we should and should not do in order to keep them working well and maintain their condition.
Today we have brought you some of the most common appliance mistakes that many Americans make that end up ruining their devices, even when they have the best of intentions. Some of them are pretty major, and knowing how to avoid this mistake can save you thousands of dollars worth of repair work, while some of them are smaller and settle a decades-old debate!
Neither appliance mistake is more or less important than the other, and if you want to keep your appliances in tip-top shape and avoid spending a fortune on repairs, keep reading!
Have you or any of your friends or family members ever made any of these mistakes? Tell us all about it in the comments below!
Not cleaning the refrigerator coils
This is probably one of the most common appliance mistakes, just because people do not even take into consideration that they should be cleaning the refrigerator coils. These handy coils at the back of your fridge are the sole reason why it can keep cool inside, as they are tasked with pulling out the heat from the appliance. Thinking that they cannot get dirty over time ends up being a rookie and common appliance mistake, as, like with everything in the kitchen, the coils can get dirty really fast!
From all the heat, dust, and potential pet fur around your home, these coils will get full of debris and no longer be able to take out the heat efficiently from your fridge, which can lead to the appliance not only racking up your electricity bill through the roof (since it will need to make the compressor inside the fridge work longer), but it will also eventually cause the compressor to “die”. Once your fridge compressor is gone, all you can do is get a new fridge, which makes this one of the most common appliance mistakes a very costly one!
To avoid making this appliance mistake, we recommend that you locate the coils on your fridge, which can be anywhere from the back to the bottom and even in the rear panel, and use a refrigerator brush to clean them once every 6 months!
You can grab such a cleaning tool from Amazon for only $10!
Overloading the washing machine with HEAVY items
Speaking of the costly and yet most common appliance mistakes, we have to include people who still believe that their at-home washing machines can be used to wash pretty much anything under the sun. The sad news is that it cannot and that if you attempt to wash some of these heavy items, you can end up breaking something in your washing machine, the most common ones being a spider bracket or a rear bearing that is really worn out.
And while some may think that this does not sound so bad, these pieces breaking in your washing machine are going to set you back a whole new washing machine. Most of the time, you cannot repair them, or if you can, it is not worth it in the long run since it would cost you just as much as buying a new washing machine is going to. So instead of making this appliance mistake that will cost you anywhere between $700 and $1500, make sure you avoid washing heavy items in your washing machine!
This includes the likes of bathroom mats since they absorb too much water and put a strain on the motor, or if you have ever considered washing your weighted blanket. It is not a normal blanket, and it can easily break your washer; they are known to destroy washing machines daily! Other items you should avoid are the ones that are heavy or that absorb a lot of water and will cause too much weight inside the machine, which will make it break easily: dog blankets, washing rugs, comforters, and sleeping bags are just some examples!
Only using the oven self-clean feature
While it may seem like this is an obvious way in which you can clean your oven, it is actually one of the most common appliance mistakes that Americans make, as it can do more harm to your oven than good.
The self-clean options can end up reaching extremely high temperatures, even as high as 1,000 degrees, so that they can incinerate any grease or dirt buildup in your oven. While it is a useful feature, it can end up causing problems for the bake element due to the extreme heat. What’s more, the heat can end up melting the bake element, frying the electric part of the oven, and warping the diffuser panel, just to mention a few of the problems you can end up encountering if you use the self-clean feature.
Appliance repair technicians see these issues over and over again, which makes them more likely to warn people about them.
Keep in mind that using the self-clean feature of the oven is a gamble, and you should be sure that you want to risk it. While it can work well for you, it can also cause you to have to pay for a very expensive repair. Likewise, there are a lot of ways to clean your oven that are not as dangerous as the self-clean method, and sometimes even faster. It will require a little bit of elbow grease, but it is worth it.
Foregoing to rinse the dishes before loading them into the dishwasher
We mentioned this decades-old debate, and now we will settle it. Experts all over the country have warned against making this commonly made appliance mistake, especially since the answer to the rinse or not rinse debate is complicated. The correct answer is that you should rinse, but only the big parts, and get rid of anything that is not food specks. Leaving a few small specks of food residue is good in the long run, as it gives the detergent the chance to activate its enzymes and clean more thoroughly.
Otherwise, you should be rinsing the plates carefully before you load up the whole dishwasher and start it. A lot of handymen have been repairing dishwashers and finding inside twist ties, toothpicks, chicken bones, labels, and mountains of rotten food that are clogging the works. If you do not rinse your plates, pots, pans, and utensils, there is a high chance that parts of your food are going to go past the dishwasher filter and get to the pump and then into the sprays, where they will clog them and the drains, leaving you with a broken dishwasher!
Do yourself a favor and rinse off anything big from the load before you start the machine!
However, we should not only concentrate on common appliance mistakes. We should definitely talk about some of the appliances that are going to make your life easier. Check out the best lightweight vacuums that are definitely worth their money here!
