Our 16-year-old clothes washing machine had a heart attack the other night.

And it died.

Now, this is the risk you take when you wait until a critical appliance dies to replace it:

You’re stuck with the prices of the day, instead, of say, maybe the prices of the month or the prices of the season.

We do appreciate the fact that the washing machine didn’t take anything else down with it during its suicide death rattle. There’s no puddles on the floor, no water left in the spin basket, no clothes ruined (that load will get re-washed, but, no big deal).

But this is not a purchase that can wait much past a couple of days, and my husband and I work different shifts. This errand had to be done within an hour or so when both of us could be shopping during business hours. So my husband and I went to Sears during my lunch break today.

The cheapest washing machine on the floor was on clearance and could have fit our needs, but …. no store delivery was possible on that purchase. We don’t have a truck or van. It would take a couple more days or rental vehicle money to arrange that.

We may as well pay a fee and have Sears take care of delivery and haul-away.

So we went to the next highest price point for a brand name my husband preferred. It’s got more doo-dads than he would like (he does the laundry), but like I said, we didn’t have time to arrange delivery details on the basic machine.

No, we didn’t pick an EnergyStar model. We’re following other eco-friendly techniques, but EnergyStar washing machines are still nearly twice as expensive up front as old technology. I hope that price point diminishes before we get to our next replacement cycle.

In the meantime, I took advantage of the fact my husband has the laundry closet half emptied to do paint touch-ups today. If I had thought about that sooner, I would have gone to the home improvement store already and picked up some primer and better quality paint to really spruce up our laundry area while it’s torn up. But for now, the dust bunnies have been washed out and the scratches and stains are painted over.

Now while we might have found a cheaper machine if we had more time to comparison shop, I did ask about any applicable discounts and sales to make sure we got the best possible deal that was available to us today. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

Luckily, we don’t expect a similar ordeal any time soon. The clothes washer was the only old MAJOR appliance still left in our home. With the exception of the vacuum cleaner, all our other appliances were bought new in 2003 and 2004.