I tend to obsess with keeping my appliances “like new” for as long as possible.
I scrub my oven clean on a weekly basis, and I try to keep the remainder of the kitchen as pristine as possible.
My obsession with keeping my possessions as fresh and clean as possible has led me to make poor decisions, as I’ve discarded perfectly good equipment just because it looked too dirty to me. While I can learn to forgive myself for throwing away a toaster that was only a year old, I’m going to have a much harder time getting over my decision to replace my furnace. A rule of thumb with replacing furnaces is this: If it’s under a decade old, keep it. If the furnace is only a few years old but looks filthy, have an HVAC professional come and scrub the equipment clean! Simple enough, right? Well, I’m not someone who pays attention to “simple”. I tried to clean the furnace up myself one Saturday afternoon, and after two hours of scrubbing with a small sponge, I gave up. Did I call a professional to clean the system? No, I called an HVAC company to take a look at the furnace and help me find a replacement. When the HVAC professionals came, they even said to me that I should hold off on replacing it and just have them thoroughly clean it out. I refused, being the germaphobe I am, and told them I wanted this dirty furnace out! They looked at each other for a moment, before hesitantly agreeing to my demands. It wasn’t until after I spent thousands of dollars on a new furnace that I realized how out-of-control my obsession with cleanliness had become!