Stove Shopping
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.