Building a Tea Garden 101

What It Is, What It Could Be, And Why In the World Would You Even Want One?

Have you ever looked at a box of tea in the store and thought, "I could do that better"? Or maybe you opened up the tea bag when you got home and saw that it was only a tiny amount of chamomile and a much larger amount of mint. Or maybe you're just a curious sort, and you want to know how to mix your own tea blends. That's where this week's post comes on; we're taking a look at the first step to answering those questions, which is growing your own tea garden. We'll walk you through what you need to consider, the benefits that there are, which plants are good for a tea garden, and some of the important things to keep in mind as you harvest and store your tea.

Deciding What Type Of Plants You Want in Your Tea Garden

Naturally, the first thing you have to look at is what type of plants are you going to grow? Well, we won't go too deeply into this section; these are questions that you should consider as you do research.

What type of garden do you want? 

    Annual or perennial? 

Do you want plants that you need to grow from seed every year? Or would you rather grow one's where you plant them once and reap a harvest for years to come?

Indoor, in containers, or in a plot?

How do you want to grow your plants? Do you love having them scattered throughout your home? Do you only have a porch and so you need to grow them in containers? Or do you have a garden in your yard that you can dedicate to this? Or are you going to go for broke and turn the entirety of your yard into a tea garden?

    To treat specific issues? 

Do you want to treat specific issues? Do you want to grow plants for a singular purpose or would you rather experiment and see what you can come up with?

Benefits To Growing Your Own Tea

All right so you've done your research, and now you can grow your own tea. What are the benefits though? After all that's a lot of work when you can just as easily go out and purchase it at Whole Foods or Central Market.

  Gifts Galore

      Let's start off with the low-hanging fruit; you will never run out of gifts for people. Whether it's the overabundance of mint, or knowing precisely which plants to mix together when someone has had a rough day and needs a pick me up, having your own tea garden is a never-ending source of gifts and ideas. If you're willing to throw in a little extra work, you can even take the plants you've already harvested and turn them into skin care products, soaps, candles, or even potpourri. All from the same garden and the work you've already put in. 

  Treat Some Health Issues At Home

     While we will never say that you should treat everything on your own or that you should not go to a doctor, sometimes a doctor will recommend you over-the-counter medicine or a day of rest.  For those days? Mint and Ginger is great for soothing your stomach. Sage and licorice root are great for a sore throat, although maybe not together. And a cup of chamomile tea is fantastic when you've had a rough week.

Important note: Please do not take anything herein as medical advice, and always make sure to speak to a medical practitioner before taking any teas in conjunction with medicines you have been prescribed.

  Help Pollinators For Your Garden And Those Around You

      By growing your own tea garden, you provide food for the natural pollinators in your area doing so means that not only will your garden flourish, but so will those for miles around you. It is one small way that you can help take care of your community without having to do anything extra. 

Blend Your Own

In our opinion, one of the best benefits for growing your own tea garden? You get to blend your own teeth. If you're in the mood to experiment you can try adding a little extra to a recipe and see how that affects the flavor. Or you might substitute in rose hips instead of lavender to give a blend something different. You don't have to trust that you'll like precisely what's in a box and then potentially end up with a box of tea that you don't like. If you don't like what's in one bag of tea, write down the recipe you used and what you didn't like about it and next time you can do it better.

Plants for Your Tea Garden 

Before we dig into these, we want to point out that while we are providing the botanical names for these plants, there are varieties. Whether you want to grow one plant or many of them, please do more research into them talk to other gardeners and, especially those that grow their own tea, to learn more about the plants for your own safety and health.  

Roman chamomile

Official Name: Chamaemelum nobile
What it’s used for: Roman chamomile has been used to treat nausea, heartburn, gas, vomiting, and anxiety. It has also been used to ease the discomfort of swollen gums.

Mint - For any variety of mint, make sure that you keep it contained somehow. This might be growing it in a planter, or keeping it well away from anything and surrounded by concrete, or you can even let it grow inside and away from any other plants or dirt. Mint is one of the hardest plants that there is and if there is a tiny bit of dirt around it it will send out runners and set up an entirely new patch before you can say 'boo.'

Official Name: Mentha ×piperita
What it’s used for: Peppermint specifically has been used to treat upset stomach, digestion, help with anxiety, and also treat headaches brought on by stress.

Roses

There are many different varieties of roses that are edible, and you’ll want to choose one that has a very strong aroma, as that means the flavor will be stronger.
What it’s used for: Rose hips are often used to treat stomach issues and are high in antioxidants.

Lavender

Official Name: lavandula angustifolia
What it’s used for: Lavender is used to help reduce stress and anxiety, which has also been shown to help you fall asleep at night. It also helps to boost the mood and alleviate symptoms of mild depression, according to preliminary studies from 

Elderberries -Technically speaking, elderberry is a shrub, and you should keep that in mind when it comes to planning out your garden; you don't want to leave the amount of space for a plant like rosemary and end up with a tree.

Official Name: Sambucus nigra
What it’s used for: Elderberry tea is packed with anti-inflammatory properties and has often been used in treating not only the cold and flu but also in reducing swelling, joint pain, and muscle aches.

Milk thistle - Milk thistle is another one that you need to keep carefully contained. Much like mint, make sure that you plan out ahead of time how you're going to do that.

Official Name: silybum marianum
What it’s used for: Milk thistle has often been used for protecting and strengthening the liver and for aiding in managing diabetes. 

Lemon balm -  It''s best to harvest lemon balm right after the flowers have grown and bloomed.

Official Name: Melissa officinalis
What it’s used for: Lemon balm has long been used to reduce stress and anxiety, to improve the appetite, and to help with sleep.

Ginger - For ginger, it's not the plant that you want; although the flowers are lovely, it is the root. You can slice or grate it for making teas.

Official Name:  Zingiber officinale
What it’s used for: Ginger has long been used to aid with nausea and vomiting, to help with the pain of osteoarthritis, and also to help treat colds and cold-like symptoms.a

Raspberry - with raspberry, you get a two-for-one deal. Not only can you harvest your own raspberries and enjoy the fruit, but you can also harvest and utilize the leaves for tea.

Official Name: Rubus idaeus
What it’s used for: Raspberry leaf tea is packed with antioxidants, relieves mouth ulcers and sore throats, alleviates inflammatory conditions such as conjunctivitis, and aids in menstrual cramping.

Dandelions - Two very important notes when it comes to dandelions. The first is to make sure that you are purchasing true dandelions and not some of their relatives. Not because they are poisonous but simply because they will not have any of the benefits or the taste profile. The second point is that you should harvest the dandelions as soon as the flowers bloom and are fully open for the first time. You can use the flowers, the stems, the leaves, and the roots. But if you don't want them to take over everything in your yard, and your neighbor's yard, and their neighbors' yard, you need to get them before the little white fuzz balls pop up.

Official Name: Taraxacum officinale
What it’s used for: Dandelion leaves act as a diuretic and are also used to stimulate the appetite. Dandelion flowers have antioxidant properties and are being researched as possibly helping the immune system. Dandelion root is used to detoxify both the liver and the gallbladder.

Echinacea

Official Name:  Echinacea purpurea

What it’s used for: Echinacea is used to boost the bodi’s immune system and reduce both the symptoms and duration of the common cold and flu.

Thyme 

Official Name: Thymus vulgaris
What it’s used for: Thyme is able to lower the heart rate in people with high blood pressure and is theorized to help lower cholesterol. It also is used as a natural cough remedy and helps to boost your immunity.

St.John's wort

Official Name: Hypericum perforatum
What it’s used for:  St John's Wort has been extensively studied in its aid with mild to moderate depression.

Catmint

Official Name: Nepeta cataria
What it’s used for: Catmint is another herb that has been used to help the stomach with diarrhea, gas, and cramps. It is said to relieve muscle spasms in the digestive system. Catmint has also been shown to reduce anxiety, nervousness, and restlessness. It is also shown to make people drowsy and should be used with caution for that reason.

Valerian

Official Name: Valeriana officinalis
What it’s used for: Valerian is an herb that people have used for many years to treat insomnia, depression, anxiety, and headaches.

Harvesting And Preparing Your Plants

Before we close out, let's take a quick look at how to go about harvesting and preparing your plants.

-in most cases, unless otherwise noted, you are going to be harvesting herbs before they flower. When herbs are first growing, they put all of their energy into growing the leaves, and so that is when the herbs are at their peak. Once the plant has flowered, it is now diverting that energy toward growing seeds.

- You'll want to cut herbs at mid-morning. You don't want dew on them, but you also don't want them to get too hot as they would in the afternoon and have the oils pulled deeper into the plant. 

- Air dry your herbs to preserve the oils within.

- Keep your herbs stored in airtight containers, in a dry area, and away from the sun. There are all sorts of lovely apothecary-style bottles that you can use to store your herbs after they've tried. The thing to keep in mind if you use those is to paint the outside black and then stencil on what the plant is within. Allowing light to come into contact with the plants will degrade them over time and prevent you from getting the best cup of tea that you can.

- Mix your tea a few bags at a time, rather than mixing everything at once. Doing this in small batches ensures that if you don't like how something turned out, you don't have to throw away an entire harvest of a plant. Instead, you just note down the ratios you used and reconsider for next time.

- This brings us to our final point, keep a tea journal. Whether you are using tea to assist with ailments or working to find the ideal blend for every person in your life, keeping careful notes is important. You might find that you didn't add enough bergamot, and so you didn't get the citrusy flavor that you wanted. For this, you'd want to up the amount or add in a secondary plant that would support that flavor. Or you might notice that using mullein left you feeling hungover the day after; for that you would want to know exactly how much you would use in a cup and how long you had seeped it so that you could decrease the amount. Just like many other activities involving experimentation keeping a tea journal is both useful and rewarding. 

What did you think? Are you hastily grabbing for some graph paper to chart out your garden? Or maybe you're thinking of growing a few container plants first to see just how much you like it? Let us know over on our Facebook page.

If you're reading this post because you needed a cup of tea after your dishwasher flooded, we can help. We won't be offering plants, though. Instead, we'll work with you to set a date and time when one of our skilled technicians can come over and diagnose the problem. You can give us a call at ((214) 599-0055) or reach out to us via our contact page.

18 Ways We're Living With Viva Magenta

Back at the beginning of the year, we talked about how Pantone's color of the year is Viva Magenta and many of you asked how you could incorporate that into your homes. We're taking a look at 18 different rooms from people across the internet both from this year and earlier who have used magenta in innovative and beautiful ways to decorate their homes.

Use Magenta Details

This kitchen is already amazing, with the cream walls and the white subway tile giving the teal cabinetry room to wow. But having little magenta details throughout the room like the rug the tea kettle and the blinds is a great way to bring this color into your home without having to do an expensive makeover. Or give up a color you already love.

A Stunning Dining Room 

You can always use color blocking to separate rooms one from another the way the magenta breaks up the dining room from the living room to the right in this room by Studio DIY. But within the space of the dining room it ties everything together, letting you know that this is one room.

Courtesy of Studio DIY

Courtesy of Rebel Walls

Use A Mural

Maybe you're not interested in doing the whole room in magenta. You can use a mural instead, like this one from Rebel Walls that not only pairs it with several other complementary colors but also shows several different shades of magenta and lets it be balanced by the White and neutral tones throughout the room. It's a way to bring in some color without overwhelming yourself.

Relaxed & Inviting

The vibrant magenta in this bathroom makes the artwork and the mirror on the walls stand out all the more add in the green from the matching bottles and the plant life and you have a very warm and inviting bathroom.

Courtesy of Decoholic

Courtesy of Kati Curtis Design & Thomas Loof

Utterly Refined

Or maybe you want a more sophisticated look for your bathroom. That's where this bathroom takes the Cake. With the long ornate mirror paired with the deep magenta of the walls, it has a very sophisticated appeal. Throw in the matching hardware for the lamps and the faucets, and the drawer pulls and you have a very refined look.

Shaping UP

If you really feel like getting crazy, this ceiling mural from Shapes For The People, is the way to go. You still have the balance of colors that work together from the teal to the magenta to the yellow and the orange, but combined with the shapes, it is a very unexpected and playful atmosphere.

Courtesy of Shapes For The People

Courtesy of 41 West

Main and Modern

On the other hand, maybe you need something vibrant in your modern bathroom. The magenta walls paired with the sterile light in this bathroom is so utterly modern, but it practically shouts the Pantone 2023 motto of “being you”.

Surprise

What about in your kitchen though? Maybe your kitchen is already full of color and light but you need some areas where it's different. That's where painting your cabinets and the underside of your Island can come in. We are all over adding splashes of color in unexpected places and doing the underside of the island like you see in this photo is one of our favorites. It is an unexpected place that most people wouldn't think to paint but it pulls the room together.

Courtesy of ANNIE SCHLECHTER

Central Focus

Maybe you're looking for a little more sedate living room but you still want something to show your personality. That's what this living room has in spades. The majority of the room is done in neutrals from the floor to the curtains the walls and even the ceiling. And then you have the couches and the tables but it's in a small enough quantity that it's balanced.

Adding In The Drama

If you need something a little more dramatic in your life this is a good source of inspiration. With the deep blue painted brick and the gold dripping down the ceiling the velvet wingback chairs POP.

Looking Up At Magenta

If you're looking to add color but you're not sure where why not look up? All of the colors in this living room work and the magenta ceiling is another neat piece in that puzzle.

Countertop Shine

Another kitchen but this time the magenta is front and center with the countertop. Instead of tying the room together the counter is the focal point drawing your eyes to it, and balanced against the wood siding it creates a vibrant yet homey feel.

Splashing Magenta Around

This cozy kitchen is a great example of how to make color work for you. Several colors are mirrored in different locations, and it ties everything together. Our favorite though is the magenta backsplash that's slightly muted. Using a colored backsplash is a great way to add small doses of color into your kitchen. Techniques like peel-and-stick or removable tiles it's even easier to try out options until you find one you like.

Upgrade Your Pantry 

If you've got a storage nook or a butler's pantry, give it an upgrade and some color! This butler’s pantry from VanderHorn Architects is a great example of just that.

Pairing the magenta with the natural wood overhead and the white framing in this nook balance each other while making it a welcoming space.

Courtesy of VanderHorn Architects

Magenta In Focus

Adding a focal wall is a great way to unify the look of your room as this bedroom shows. The magenta tiles add texture and color to the room but also add a very pop feeling that counters the more ornate headboard and settee.

Magenta In The Background

While the chairs are magenta and certainly draw your focus, we want to point out the magenta wallpaper in the background. Using the wallpaper to add a second color in the background allows you to add some pop to the room against the darker paint. It also adds a ton of personality, without taking away from the room.

Living In Jewels

This living room is like living inside a jewel box. The walls might be white, but the layers of magenta and gold offer a stunning and lavish living room that anyone could be comfortable in.

A final room that’s done in shades of magenta and gold but feels very sedate somehow. If you get how this one works, let us know!

Do you think you'll be adding Viva Magenta or similar colors to your home sometime soon? Let us know over on our Facebook page, as always, we love to hear from you.

If you're wondering why an appliance repair blog is going on about colors and decorating, don't worry; this isn't all we do. Whether it is your freshly painted washer, or your still stainless refrigerator that is giving you fits, we can help. At Appliance Rescue Service, we work with you to find a date and time that meets your needs. Will send out one of our experienced technicians to diagnose the problem and then fix it. Whether you're in McKinney, Frisco, Dallas, Allen, or anywhere in between, we are here for you. Reach out to us via our contact page or by giving us a call at ((214) 599-0055). 

Celebrate Spring With Some Amazing Art Nouveau Decor Tips

10 Ways To Bring This Style Into Your Home

Art Nouveau looks at the natural world and makes it something magical. It's the sweeping curves of a river or a branch bending in the breeze. It's the way light shines through the wings of a dragonfly or softly diffuses through flower petals.

This is all well and good, but the question comes in how do you bring that concept into your home? Fortunately, we're looking to do just that.

If you're looking to start by learning about art nouveau and you're still trying to decide if you're interested, look to the classics. These four artists worked in several fields and are prominent names in art nouveau. So they're a good starting point to learn more about what you like and what you don't.

Louis Majorelle 

Emile Galle

Hector Guimard 

Alphonse Mucha 

Use Asymmetrical Shapes

Although symmetry is often found in the natural world, asymmetry is also. Asymmetrical shapes reflect the motion in the natural world.

When we say asymmetrical shapes, we're talking about things that aren't balanced perfectly. That might be a couch that's higher on one side than the other, that might be having something that follows the shape of a leaf or a river. 

Arches and Curves

If you want a more delicate touch when bringing art nouveau into your home, consider where you can bring in curves and arches. Unlike some of the other options on this list, they don't have to be the central focus of your home. You can bring them in as quietly as you want. Whether that is having arches in your furniture or having them in the architectural details of a room, they are very subtle. 

You can bring in curves in the shapes of your rugs, headboards, mirrors, chairs, and even couches. Or you can get in touch with the DIY side and fake and arched doorway or ceiling.

Japanese Motifs

Japanese motifs were very much in style when art nouveau was being created. As the trade partnership with Japan first began to prosper in the early 1900s, people in Europe and America were fascinated. So art nouveau draws heavily on Japanese motifs. Whether you look at their fabrics, architecture, or art, Japan has historically been moved by details in the natural world. You should consider bringing in anything from artwork to fabrics to furniture to include as part of your home.

Stained Glass

Courtesy ofPatrice Soudier

Stained glass can be incorporated almost anywhere in the home today. You're no longer restricted by having to pay for giant pieces or even having them be just for windows. You can use them as decor around your home; you can use them as panels, they're even different ways that you can create faux stained glass yourself. Look to artists like Ernesto Basile and Alphonse Mucha for ideas and color palettes.

Ornamentation

Courtesy of Steve R

In many ways, art nouveau is a style devoted to excess. Art nouveau is not an austere style, unlike some of the others we've covered in the past. Furniture, decor and even just the walls within your home were all up for ornamentation. They can all be detailed with exotic woods, semi-precious stones, silver, and iridescent glass. When it comes to adding flair and your personality, there is no limit.

Parquet 

Parquet has long been seen as a mark of wealth and luxury. It's a type of wooden flooring that was made by arranging small slots of wood into distinct and repeated patterns. You used to have to lay down one piece at a time, very carefully fitting one to another. Modern parquet can come in tile form, where the wood slots are bonded to a backing. While some patterns were drawn from nature and done as repeating patterns similar to what you might find in textiles or tiles, others were more focused on shape and the natural flow of movement.

Wallpapers

Coming out of the Victorian age, wallpaper was still very popular in art nouveau design. Fortunately, modern wallpaper is much easier to create and apply and far less poisonous to your health. As we've mentioned in other posts late last year and early this year, peel-and-stick wallpaper is available in a wide variety of options, including the highly stylized flowers that are so prevalent in art nouveau. You can get them in a wide range of colors, from bold purples to soft sages. You don't even have to do the wall-to-wall look. Instead, you could make a feature wall or use wallpaper as the matting behind artwork in a gallery. You could even get creative and use it as a chair rail.

Carved Wood

Courtesy of Wolfgang Eckert

Using real wood in the home was seen differently than it is today. Instead, it was a way of bringing in the natural world as surely as using stone or clay. It was something to be carved and sculpted, and it blurred the line between what was a necessary part of the architecture of a home and what was decoration. Everything was fit to be carved, shaped, ornamented, or detailed, and very often, pieces would flow between the two distinctions of decor and architecture. You might find the mantle for a fireplace that would sweep down and be shaped into an alcove or nook for seating.

Metalwork

Courtesy of Alexandria

The undulating and organic forms of nature found love as part of the home and as decor ornamentation or furniture within the garden. You can bring the same to your home by looking for pieces that mimic your favorite aspects of nature or by finding an artist willing to create them for you. 

Tiles

Courtesy of Mabel Amber

Much like every other aspect of art nouveau, using tiles in the home was not seen as purely an architectural choice. Pieces would blend into decor and ornamentation and back again. You can achieve this look by using tiles as panels or ornamenting different furniture pieces.

You can also mix molded tiles, iridescent pieces, and metal tiles to create unique pieces around your home. 

Art Nouveau can be summed up by saying take the natural world and have your home reflect it without bringing the natural world into your home. 

What do you think? Is art nouveau for you? Whether you're looking to redo the whole of your home or bring in one or two pieces, let us know over on our Facebook.

If you wound up here not because you're looking to represent the elements in your home but instead because you want the elements of your stove to function, that's where our technicians come in. And Appliance rescue service, we're here for you. When you call us, we will work with you to find a time and date that works within your schedule to send out one of our technicians. Our dedication is to get your home running smoothly again. You can reach out to us via our contact page or by giving us a call at ((214) 599-0055). 

Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprints

The Best Cookies for Any Bake Sale

Sometimes the weather just calls for cookies.

While it is very firmly spring now, we sometimes get late cold fronts and even ice storms into April, where we are. We've had hard freezes as far into the year as mid-May, even. And cold days like that are an excellent excuse to make cookies. 

This time we ran a little short on butter and had to get creative. So we combined the idea of cream cheese snowball cookies and shortbread thumbprint cookies and ended up with this sweet little hybrid: chocolate cream cheese thumbprint cookies.

Ingredients:

1 8 oz block cream cheese

1/2 stick butter

1 egg

1/4 c bakers cocoa

2 1/4 c all-purpose flour

1 c sugar

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 tsp vanilla extract

2-3 tbsp raspberry preserves

Tools:

Cookie sheet

Parchment paper

mixing bowls

microwave safe dish or saucepan (to melt butter and cream cheese)

measuring cups and spoons

spoon

ziploc bag

toothpick or scissors or sharp knife

Before we get started here, you should know that two of your ingredients are going to be your problem children. The butter and the cream cheese are going to be solid when you start out, but they really need to be liquid in order to do their jobs here. So we need to melt them - carefully. Most people use the microwave to accomplish this, but we have had terrible luck with that in the past (think exploding and/or scorched edges and untouched centers despite careful timing and frequent stirring). We prefer to use the stovetop and a saucepan over the lowest possible heat and stir every minute or so.

Cream cheese does melt, it's just stubborn. This is definitely not a recipe where you can substitute in cream cheese's lower-fat sibling, Neufchatel cheese. Leave it over the heat until you have no more lumps. You'll need to be extra patient with this step, sorry.  

As with any doughy recipe, mix your wet ingredients in one bowl (be sure to break the yolk on the egg, you want it to incorporate fully) and your dry ingredients in another. This helps prevent finding big lumps of crumbly, un-mixed flour or globs of sticky egg when you go to work the dough into individual cookies.

Stir together the contents of your two mixing bowls in the larger of the two bowls. Don't overdo it, because the cookies will be tough if you get carried away.

Once everything is mixed well, divide your dough into 36 balls. We know, three dozen feels like a weird number to shoot for, but it's what our test batch turned out to have after we split off comfortable serving-sized pieces.

Put down a layer of parchment paper on your baking sheet and preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Place each of the dough balls destined to become cookies on the sheet. They don't spread much at all, so as long as there's some space between them to press them, you can really pack them in.

Press lightly on each one with your thumb (or a spoon, or literally anything that will slightly flatten the dough and create a little well for your raspberry preserves). The goal here is to flatten the ball of dough into a thick disc, leaving a little divot in the center that doesn't create a slope to the outside edges of the cookie. If you like runny messes of preserves, that's your business - but we'd very much prefer it stay where we put it. 

Once all the cookies are shaped and ready for the preserves, fill a ziploc bag with the preserves and use something sharp to cut or poke a little hole in one corner. Utilize it like a piping bag, squeezing a little bit of preserves into each cookie. Try not to overfill any of the wells, as they'll make an epic mess if you do.

Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Allow them to cool on the cookie sheet for at least ten minutes before you try to move them - they'll still be very soft when you take them out of the oven, and they'll need that extra few minutes to firm up a little.

We know it's tempting to eat them right away - they smell so good, after all! - but please, please give them time to cool. Otherwise, you'll be like us and burn the roof of your mouth on what feels like molten lava.  

We won’t ask if you’re going to try making them this time. These are too good not to try. So instead, let us know over on our Facebook, what other types of jam do you think you could pair with this? 

Since you wound up here, and you’ve read all the way to the bottom, when was the last time you had a maintenance check for your appliances? If you haven’t done it in at least a year, you might consider having one. Spring and fall are the best times to have your appliances checked out, rather than the chaos of the holidays or the heat of the summer. Getting an experienced technician to walk through all of your problems now can mean your appliances are less likely to fail during the heat of the summer. 

If that type of preparation is something you’re interested in, give us a call ((214) 599-0055) or reach out to us via our contact page. We’ll work with you to set up a time and date that works for your schedule and send out one of our technicians to work with you. At Appliance Rescue Service, our goal is to keep your home running smoothly. 

Places to Avoid: The Paw Version!

Or, Appliances That Your Pets Need to Stay Away From

Appliance Rescue Service has been taken over by the pets! This week we (Murder Mittens the cat and Odie the dog) are talking about our favorite places in the house, the appliances! They offer warm, and cold and food, we can't forget the food! 

Courtesy of Gomez Daniel

Washer

MM: I don't understand why the humans use this one it removes their scent, and then they have ti put it all over things again.  They put their clothes in, the clothes get wet, and then they move them over to another rumbly. 

O: And! They yell at you when you get them wet any other time, even though they also have the rain room that they go into.

MM: That is the bathroom. They put my litterbox in there as well. The wet machine is nice to lay on when it rumbles, but you're right on them griping about getting wet. 

O: I don't like the way everything smells,  but I love watching the clothes tumble round and round.

MM: Of course you do.

Dryer 

O: I hate this one more than the wet machine. It smells and it's hot. 

MM: As usual you have no taste. This one is perfect to curl up inside of when the humans have removed their clothes. You just have to make sure you don't stay in there when they put the clothes back. 

Courtesy of RaGeBe

O: Wait is it that where you go when I want to play?

Oven

O: It's the hot food box!  Humans like to put their food in and then they take it out later and it's a warm and I don't get why they put it in there to make it warm because it's just as good cold but sometimes if you're fast enough you can steal food from it! 

MM: Or if you wait for the right moment you can steal food from it and take a nap inside the warm. It's too hot sometimes, but that is why you are supposed to wait. 

O: And we're not going to talk about how you got your tail singed the one time.

MM: Not if you don't want me telling Ralph where you hid your bone.

Dishwasher 

O: This is my favorite! This one has all of the smells and food, almost every day! 

MM: Yes but the humans always yell at you for standing on it. Whereas I can stand on it and not get caught.

O: And that is just one more reason that I steal your kibble when you're not looking. Anyway, the humans put in the food dishes, and they still have food on them. They don't even lick their dishes clean! And then the machine makes lots of noise and spits steam everywhere - 

MM: Which is the best time to lay on the counter above it.

O: And then when they open it there's no more food! Why do they feed the food to the machine and not to me!

Stove

O: This one is tough Murder Mittens. On one hand, the humans make food up there, lots of food.

MM: On the other hand, even if you can get up to the food, you never know if it's safe.

O: Exactly! It looks like it's the rest of the kitchen but sometimes it's hot and sometimes it's not and sometimes there's fire according to Ralph down the street.

Courtesy of elina-volkova

MM: You trust the Chihuahua? He barks at his own shadow.

O: You have a point. Maybe his has fire but ours doesn't?

Refrigerator

O: The cold box! There is so much food in here and the humans just leave it in there and stare in front of the food as if they expect it to do something. I know the food is dead when they put it in there so why do they stare at it? 

MM: You expect me to be able to explain the humans?

O: No it just doesn't make sense. Anyway this one is also great during the hot months if you're sneaky you can get in there and eat the food and be cold all of the best things in one spot.

Courtesy of luca andrade

MM: As much as I hate it, I have to agree. There's food, there's tight spaces to curl up in, and it is cool when it is unbearably hot outside.

Freezer

O: This one is frustrating. On one hand it's nice and cold when it's hot outside. I love this box. On the other hand it smells like food but everything's frozen and hard definitely not food it's so cruel for the humans to do this. And then they yell at you when you want to stay in there and they put wet things on you. 

MM: The wet things. Perhaps the humans think you don't bathe yourself I certainly don't. As to the cold box, I believe the humans put things here so that they are food for longer like hiding one of your treats so that you can eat it later. 

O: But who would they hide it from? It's not like with my treats and you're going to eat them later. 

A final note from the People of Appliance Rescue Service: Although this has been phrased in a rather light-hearted way these are all places that you want to keep your pets out of for their safety and for the longevity of your appliances. In the event of your pets getting into one of your appliances and you being unable to get them out please make sure to call your vet first and a second. While we love our pets as much as the next person, we are much better at fixing appliances than we are animals. If you want to reach out to us about your appliances, you can reach out to us at ((214) 599-0055) or by heading to our contact page.