Over the summer I was making the kids lunch, and I noticed a sudden silence, or as much of a silence you can expect with five children. The change in the room was the lack of hum from the microwave. It didn’t beep, so I assumed it tripped the breaker, but when I turned from the stove I saw the timer was still counting down.
My immediate reaction was that of most people. “Great. Now we have to get another microwave. We’ve only had this thing a few years.” If my mind wasn’t consumed with rebuilding our bank account that was decimated by paying off our mortgage, I may be the proud owner of a shiny new microwave right now, but we broke.
Luckily, I recently overheard some people talking about this new thing called the internet. From what I understand, it’s a series of tubes that carries information from one place to another. So, I jumped right on my handheld computer and started searching. I didn’t find anything on my exact unit, but I did find that it was likely a microswitch on the door. I have a bit of an electrical background so I took it apart and did some troubleshooting. Sure enough, it was a microswitch. I went on the eBay and ordered one up for only $4.97. The problem was, the part # on the switch could be normally open or normally closed. Guess which one I got? You guessed it. The wrong one.
So after it’s long voyage from China and me finding out I had the wrong switch, I had to order another one. The kick in the ass is that this time I got 2 for $1.89. After another long voyage from China, I finally got them, fixed the microwave, and was back on my way to re-earning the love of my family. My wife used to always say she wishes she lived back in the days of Little House on the Prairie, but I don’t think she took into consideration the lack of microwaves. That’s a deal breaker right there.
So after the long, long wait, I still only had to pay $6.86 instead of $90+ for a new microwave. That’s worth cooking everything on the stove for a couple months, in my opinion. Plus it shows the kids that you don’t have to just throw everything away in our disposable society. You can still fix things and use them in this country.
Here is an account of our experience. Sorry for the cruddy audio. It was the first video I’ve ever made.