Home Appliance Blog

In honor of Celebrate Your Independents month, I want to know about your favorite local, independent businesses.

(See more about Celebrate Your Independents month here and here.)

My personal favorites are Mama’s Pizza on Rice Street in the North End of St. Paul and Hunt & Gather Antiques on Xerxes in South Minneapolis.

Whether it’s a mom-and-pop retailer in your neighborhood, a service provider passed down from your parents, or a quirky restaurant you’d drive across town for — what businesses do you support?

Need inspiration? Check out buylocalmn.com, a directory of independent businesses in the area and product of MetroIBA.

Asko, whose latest designer series is pictured, designed its front-load laundry for main-floor applications from the start. Other manufacturers took a while, but most problems have been worked out.

Front-loading washers have been available long enough now that we’re replacing more and more first generation units of the now ubiquitous style of washing machines.

Front-loader washers clean better, use less water and (my favorite feature) spin more water out of the clothes with spin speeds around 1200 RPMs. But all those rotations made some customers’ experience with the earliest models a bit, well, shaky.

The washer would vibrate. It would move. Customers would call and say, “My washer is walking across the floor!” Things would fall off the walls. I heard of an extreme case in which a customer’s sheetrock shook loose.

Of course, it wasn’t solely the washers’ fault. People pulled washers and dryers out of the basements they were designed for, reinforced with their sturdy concrete block, and put them where they were never supposed to go: upstairs. Empty nesters converted their children’s former closets on the second floor and ended up chasing runaway machines. Families tucked laundry units into main floor kitchens without reinforcing the floors.

The problems were real for some. Fortunately, those problems came out in the wash (rimshot, please?) as most manufacturers since beefed up the suspensions of front-load washers.

So your friends’ warnings about front-load washers likely are moot dangers. You should still reinforce the floors if you’re converting a space for laundry, and if so, pedestals might not be the best bet*, but several manufacturers now guarantee that you’ll be happy putting their front-loader on your main floor.

If your existing washer is on the move, pick up a vibration isolation pad, like ShakeAway, at your local appliance parts dealer. I like Dey Appliance Parts, because I’ve had the number to its Snelling Avenue outfit memorized for about eight years now: (651)647-0171.

*Miele’s pedestals attach to the laundry units with bolts, making it the safest bet for elevated laundry on uncertain surfaces

Subtitled: Eat your heart out, Tomkat.

“What’s a Stellian?” people often ask me. (This is the natural progression from, “Wait, you’re like a WARNER Warner?”)

It’s a good question, seeing as it’s a made up word. It’s not even a real name. I looked up “Stellian” on WhitePages.com one time when I decided I would like to marry someone who could provide a humorous surname hyphenation — he doesn’t exist. (Update: upon redoing this search, I discovered a 68-year-old man by the name of Stellian in Kansas. Wonder if he’s on Facebook…)

And it’s not a fast horse, nor a foreign word — that I know of. Stellian is what’s called a portmanteau.

You might be familiar with portmanteaus from some Stellian imitators, whom I’ll show below:

Back in the early ’50s, Steve and Lillian Farkas combined their first names to create Stellian Appliance on Snelling and Larpenteur, where my grandpa Jim Warner would begin working a few years later. Jim Warner bought Stellian in 1971, after years of faithful service, and added his family’s name to the already-established local store (Back then it would’ve been, “What’s a Warner?”).

We still own that location and since have added six more in the time that media covering celebrity supercouples have caught wind of Steve and Lillian’s genius.

Warners’ Stellian: spurring imitation for more than 50 years.

If you’re concerned with cleanliness, especially if you suffer from allergies and/or asthma, a steam washer is a no-brainer.

Why? Gaseous water molecules (aka steam) penetrate the tightly woven fibers of clothing more effectively than water droplet molecules — which are much larger –  and lift out stubborn stains and odors and eliminate most allergens, leaving you with brighter whites and more vibrant colors than a standard wash cycle.

Steam also takes less time to do a better job, because it reaches higher temperatures more quickly. An internal steam chamber superheats incoming water into vapor and introduces it in the middle of a wash cycle for about 20 minutes.

WM2501HWA, on sale for $999 thru 1/24

I talked about steam dryers’ ability to refresh clothes, but some models — like LG’s TrueSteam — has a steam refresh cycle in the washer to reduce wrinkles and odor without actually washing the clothes.

The LG steam washer is also the first washer certified “asthma and allergy friendly” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, because its Allergiene Cycle is proven to remove 95% of household dust mites and domestic animal dander.

Of course it’d be lovely to have an entire set of steam laundry, but depending on your needs (sanitizing nonwashable items vs. eliminating allergens from clothing and linens) you could choose one and still get superior performance. Just some modern convenience to consider…

Many businesses put together gift ideas for the holidays. So, I thought, why shouldn’t Warners’ Stellian?

Who doesn’t want a fridge or an electric range under the tree? Yet, believe it or not,we don’t make it onto many wish lists.

Not one to be left out, I shifted gears to our lower-ticket items — “gifty things” as a co-worker called them — and began brainstorming the holiday promotion to end all promotions:

Won't this look pretty under your tree?

Buy Warners’ Stellian’s employee cookbook, “Cooking Traditions” (of New York Times Bestseller List fame…), get a free out-of-box trim kit!

Give your kids the gift of clean: Stuff their stockings with festive bottles of  stainless steel cleaner!

Moms dream of radiator brush attachments for their vacuums. Isn’t this the year to finally make her dream a reality?

OK, maybe not.

But people say that this year more than ever practical gifts are in vogue. What’s more practical than a water filter and high-efficiency laundry detergent, people!

At least by now I have you dreaming of grill accessories. Here’s part of the plan where I close the deal: You can get them for free!

All you have to do is buy gift cards — maybe for new homeowners to use toward the purchase of appliances to updating their kitchen or for parents that could use a new fridge with more space.

For every $100 of gift certificates you buy, we give you $10 back to use for yourself (so you can get that Dishwasher Magic that’s been on your list).

Or if your list is more of the “wine coolers and grills” sort, we sell wine coolers and grills.

If you're into that sort of thing, here's the Holland Grill Companion Gas Grill ($250) and Avanti 16 Bottle Wine Cooler ($150). I'm more of cooktop cleaner girl, myself.

Nothing says bah humbug like "cheap"-driven mobs.

How did all of this Black Friday craziness begin? More importantly, where does it end? Is it going to push Thanksgiving right out the door?

Black Friday, a term coined by the media to describe the phenomenon big box retailers created to get consumers to give up a night of sleep — and in more and more cases, a holiday with the family — to stand in line for a “deal” the day after Thanksgiving.

Did the consumers ask for this, or did big box retailers create it? Consumers fear losing out on a discount they feel they really need — and that’s being played upon. Really, these prices could be available during normal hours, instead of forcing employees into work at 2 a.m. and encouraging dangerous frenzy.

We used to love the fact we weren’t open on Sunday, but that eventually gave way to the reality of competition. I wonder if small family business and independent retailers will feel the open-early, hysterical Black Friday push in fear of losing a bunch of business.

And then what? First 5 a.m., then comes 4 in the morning and then why not 3? How about we just kill Thanksgiving all together?

Warners’ Stellian discussed being open early on Friday but decided the culture of our company and our employees mean more than a few extra bucks.

Consumers can push back — and they are — according to a nationwide survey by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance that suggested independent businesses may be faring better than chains during the recession.

I loved that the American Independent Business Alliance (we’re a member of local chapter MetroIBA) just took the words out of my mouth: “YOUR READERS DON’T CARE IF SHOPPERS LINE UP AT WALMART EITHER!”

“As people are doing their holiday shopping, we hope they’ll look critically at the corporate advertising onslaught and the claim that big business provides better deals,” said (Jennifer Rockne, co-founder of AMIBA). “When we consider the value of quality products, saving time, and the quality of our experience, we’ll often find our hometown businesses ultimately provide the best deal.” [emphasis added]

Hat tip to WCCO’s Jason DeRusha on Black Friday ads/store openings.