Stove Shopping

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Charmian can’t come to the blog right now. She’s out looking for a new stove.

Here’s her I-might-as-well-blow-the-wad wish list. How many features do you think she’ll actually get? Remember, she’s going for a 24″ natural gas model, not a standard 30″, and had to surrender her dream of owning an Aga to financial reality.

She wouldn’t mind a range that has:

  • various sized burners
  • elements that convert to a grill
  • a self-cleaning oven
  • a convection oven
  • a rotisserie

In reality, she’d settle for an oven with:

  • a functional timer that can be heard more than 2 feet away
  • enough insulation to prevent items on the back ledge from melting
  • a broiler that’s level and stays on its tracks
  • a door handle to hang dish cloths from

Shopping for an apartment-sized appliance can leave you feeling more like a game show contestant than a consumer. For every feature you select you’ll have to let something go. “Sure you can have the oven racks, but they’ll cost you the element knobs.”

After a day of comparison shopping, Charmian will return with feature-envy, a library of marketing material and a headache. Help her make a realistic decision. What range features would you give up and which ones would you fight for?

Photo © iLoveButter. Published under a Creative Commons License.