An impressive chest

It’s February, which means every shop will be stacking their shelves with Easter eggs. (Hot cross buns have already been on the shelves for a month.) At this rate, “Christmas in July” will be when the stores start putting up the decorations.

It also means the kids are no longer on school holidays.

Now any friends who don’t have kids probably think you’re back on Easy Street. No more cries of “I’m bored”, or worrying where they might be. You can just send them off to school and get back to your book/soaps/last will and testament.

But you know it’s nothing like that. Now that they’re home every night the place looks like a pigsty. And thanks to the mountain of washing they’ve left for you, it smells like one as well.

And then there’s the never-ending battle to keep them fed.

It wasn’t so bad during the holidays. More often than not they were out with their friends, and so they were happy to skip a meal or two. But now they’re eating at home every day of the week, and you can barely keep any food in the fridge. It’s as if their stomachs are designed like Doctor Who’s TARDIS.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution. By renting a chest freezer from Home Appliance Rentals you can start buying your food in bulk—a real money saver. For the first time in years you’ll actually have a freezer that’s full. And because it’s covered in junk like every other flat surface in your house, the kids will be too lazy to move it all to look inside.

Of course, like any other Home Appliance Rentals appliance they’ll deliver and install it for free. And when the kids have finally moved out of home and you don’t need it any more, Home Appliance Rentals will take it away for you as well. (Sorry, but they can’t leave the freezer and take your kids away.)

So what are you waiting for? Give Home Appliance Rentals a call and start stocking up.

After all, pretty soon you’ll need to buy the Christmas ham.

Clothes maketh the mess

Congratulations! You made it to 2013.

It was a tradition Christmas—friends and relatives arriving unannounced to stay the week, being woken up at some ungodly hour to open presents, and eating twice your body weight in ham, turkey and pudding.


But things are almost back to normal now. The friends and relatives left when the food ran out, and the pile of wrapping paper should burn itself out in a few days.


But it’s taking a while to lose the 20 kilos you put on over the break, which is a problem. And not just because you have to re-stump the house.


Along with the latest gadget (iPhone/iPad/iWentBrokeBuyingThisForYou), you got a bunch of clothes. And then during the Boxing Day sales you exchanged them for clothes you’d actually wear in public.


Unfortunately your wardrobe is already overflowing to the point where you now have a “floordrobe”. And until you can fit into them all again you have no idea what to keep and what to “donate” to the pile of burning wrapping paper.


Fortunately, Home Appliance Rentals has the solution: hire a wardrobe to store all your new clothes.


Sure you could buy yourself one, but what’s the point? Chances are you’ll only need it for a month or so (unless you really went overboard with the Christmas pudding).


And if you did buy one you’d either have to lug it home and manoeuvre it into position, or spend the next three days making sense of the flat pack instructions. (“Insert part A into part B, then hit yourself in the head with a rubber mallet (not included).”


Home Appliance Rentals will not only deliver it to your house, they’ll also put it where you want it. You don’t need to life a finger—well, maybe one to tell them where your bedroom is.


And when you’ve finally sorted out your clothes and have everything stored neatly in your wardrobe (or you can at least see the floor again), they can take it away again.


On second thoughts, you may want to keep it a while. Australia Day is coming up soon, and there’s no point letting all that pavlova and lamington go to waste.

Game On

Christmas is just around the corner (according to the department stores, at least). And for once you’re looking forward to carols being destroyed by the latest “discovery” on Australian Idol / X Factor/ Australia’s Got Talent (But Not Here).

Why? Because with a bit of luck they’ll drown out the incessant cries of “Can I have an Xbox for Christmas?” you’ve been hearing for the past month.

Actually, it hasn’t been quite that bad. More like “Can I have a...”, followed by “Xbox”, “PS3”, “Wii” or whatever they’ve just played with at a friend’s house.

(It’s just a pity you didn’t know the Wii was actually a game console. The family still teases you about pulling up outside a toilet block when you heard “Can I have a Wii” from the back seat.)

But you’ve done your research (by reading the toy catalogues instead of just hiding them), so you now know what they all are.

You also realise just how expensive they are. (You were hoping they were model numbers, not prices.) There’s no way you can afford all three, so which one do you choose?

You could just buy one and hope for the best. But if it turns out to be the wrong one… well, let’s just say the toilet block teasing will seem trivial in comparison.

Instead, why not try all three (ideally not at once) and see which one your family likes best?

Simply rent a PS3, Xbox 360 Kinect or Wii from Home Appliance Rentals, grab a few games from your nearest Blockbuster, and have the family try it out for a week or two. When you return it, hire out another one, and so on.

And once you’ve tried them all, you can choose the system you like the best (i.e. the one where you got to kick your partner’s butt).

It’s all about presentation

It’s your worst nightmare.

There you are, updating your Facebook status during yet another boring committee meeting. (“My brain cells are now officially unemployed. There is nothing for them to do here.”) Suddenly people are congratulating you, and you realise you’ve just been volunteered (or rather, “voluntold”) to give a presentation to some potential clients.

(This is the only reason people go to meetings: to make sure they don’t get dobbed into actually doing anything.)

So you spend the next few days creating the obligatory PowerPoint slideshow and ignoring the “advice” of your co-workers:

“There’s not enough information on the slides.”

“You need some funny sound effects. You know, like on Funniest Home Video.”

“Are you sure you can’t make all the text flash on and off?”

“Maybe you should… ow!”

At last it’s ready, and you email it to your boss for final approval, asking her when you should book the meeting room for the presentation.

And that’s when she drops the bombshell. They’re not coming to your office.

You’re going to theirs.

Your heart starts racing, and not just because of what you had for lunch. These people are technological luddites. They still use overhead transparencies, for goodness sake. And you can’t take any of your equipment because it’s hard-wired into the walls and ceiling.

Luckily you’ve got Home Appliance Rentals to help you out. They can supply you with not only the data projector and the screen, but also a set of speakers if your boss insisted on having those sound effects. And they know you won’t be presenting for weeks (it will only seem that long), so they offer very reasonable short-term rates.

Of course, you might want to hang onto it all for a while, just in case they want you to do another presentation.

And in the meantime, it’ll be perfect for watching all those funny videos on YouTube.

Let the (fun and) Games begin

Unless your neighbours are in the habit of cheering loudly at three in the morning, you probably know the Olympics Games are on.

Once again athletes from all over the world have come together to keep warm (they are in Great Britain, after all), and to compete for the chance to show the world they don’t know their own national anthem.

Unfortunately because of the time difference all the action happens at night, and so we’re all forced to claim two weeks of sick leave so we can recover during the day.

Note: When you’re filling out your leave forms, be sure to put down the correct reason (“Being patriotic”).

The good news is Home Appliance Rentals can make your late night ritual the next best thing to being there.

The first thing you’ll need is a big screen so you don’t miss any of the action (not to mention some of the competitors’ surnames). And Home Appliance Rentals has screens to suit every room and budget.

Of course, to get the full experience you need a good sound system. You want to hear every splash from the pool, every grunt from the athletes, and every cliché from the commentary team (it makes for a great drinking game). So why not rent out a home theatre system while you’re at it?

Chances are you’ll be watching the Games in your lounge room (unless you have a very big bedroom and very understanding partner), so you may as well be comfortable. So grab yourself a sofa bed so you can lie comfortably while the events are on and sleep through all boring stuff (athlete profiles, dressage, etc.)

Like most people, you probably have a refrigerator that’s full of food. If you’re a serious Gamer you should hire a second fridge so you can maintain those vital fluids just like the athletes. (Mind you, the stuff they drink rarely has a head on it.)

Yes, with Home Appliance Rentals you really can experience all the excitement without leaving your house. (Although we do recommend you leave your lounge room occasionally. There’s a reason we don’t hire out Portaloos, you know.)

And what happens when the Games are finally over? Well, looking at the shows that are coming on after the Olympics, you’ll want to keep the big screen and home theatre system for a while yet.

You’ll need something to watch DVDs on.

Baby it's cold inside

We’re now smack bang in the middle of winter (“smack bang” being the sound of everyone trying to shut off their alarm clock), and it’s pretty darn cold out there. (Apparently it has something to do with the weather.)

And when I say “out there” I’m not talking about the temperature outside. I mean anywhere that isn’t… well, that isn’t under the doona.

Having a shower now involves sprinting to turn the hot water on, sprinting back into bed to get warm again, and then sprinting one last time to have a shower before the hot water runs out. You’ve taken up cooking because the stove is the warmest appliance in the house. And you’ve been holding the fridge door open more and more because it’s warmer in there than in your kitchen.

So what can you do besides nominating yourself for the next winter Olympics?

Well, you could wear your entire wardrobe at once, which will not only keep you warm but also deflect small calibre bullets. Just remember to peel off the first dozen layers when you go anywhere that’s heated to avoid spontaneously combusting.

Another option would be to turn on every appliance in the house and hope they generate enough heat to keep you warm without blowing a fuse. Just make sure the front door is unlocked so the neighbours can let themselves in when they want to complain about the noise.

Or you could do the smart thing and rent a heater from Home Appliance Rentals.
Why is it such a smart idea? Well, for starters you’re not buying something you’ll only use for six months or so. It also means you don’t have to find somewhere to store it during the summer when the influx of visitors means space is at a premium (except between your brother-in-law’s ears).

But best of all, you don’t have to worry about dragging it into the house and installing it. (If you’re anything like me, the only “exhaust kit” you want to deal with is your comfy armchair.) Home Appliance Rentals will do all that for you, leaving you to try and tackle the mountain of washing in your laundry.

It wasn’t always a mountain, of course. You used to be pretty much on top of your laundry. But with so much rain lately you haven’t been able to hang anything out, and if you don’t do something soon the laundry will be on top of you.

Forget about rummaging around for your least dirty pair of jeans—it’s too dangerous. In fact, the pile is so high now it’s starting to snow on your undergarments.

So why not hire a clothes dryer from Home Appliance Rentals as well as a heater? You’ll knock over that laundry in no time (a decent shove should do the trick), and you’ll have something far more interesting to watch than what’s on television at the moment.

(Remember: when you see your red sock spin around for the hundredth time, it’s not a repeat. It’s an “encore”.)

Thanks to Home Appliance Rentals you can finally get out from under that doona and demolish the mountain of laundry so can focus on more important matters.

Like finding out when the winter Olympics training program starts.

So near, yet sofa

There’s nothing quite like relaxing on the sofa with a drink in one hand and the TV remote in the other. You may even be able to change channels if the kids haven’t stolen the batteries for their latest toy.

Of course, if you’ve just spent all your money on the latest LED LCD 3D TV with built-in HDMI, Wi-Fi and 17 other acronyms you’re probably sitting on an old milk crate that doubles as your dining table.

But sooner or later you’ll want a decent sofa, if only so you don’t have to clear the table (i.e. tip your milk crate over) every time you want to sit down.

The easiest thing to do is hire a sofa from Home Appliance Rentals. They’ll not only deliver it for free, but also move it to the perfect spot in your lounge room. (It’s not like they’ll have to move a lot of furniture.)

It also means you’ll avoid the problems of choosing the wrong sofa, such as…

The quicksand effect

While you don’t want your sofa to feel like you’re sitting on a slab of concrete (or a milk crate), you don’t want it to be too soft either. Sure it feels great sinking into the cushions, but soon your knees are around your ears and you can’t pull yourself out again. And just like the quicksand in those B-grade movies, the more you struggle, the further you sink. (You may want to start growing some vines in your lounge room, just in case.)

Tip for renters:

Hang a large painting on the wall to hide all the holes made by your grappling hook.

On the other hand, this type of sofa is perfect if you’re inviting people over to look at your holiday snaps. Just ask them to sit, and within five minutes you’ll have a captive audience—literally.

The one good thing about sinking into the depths of your sofa is you might find all your stuff that’s been swallowed up by…

The black hole effect

You might think it’s a coincidence that all your loose change winds up under the cushions. But sofas are actually an alien technology, and their design creates a field like the Death Star’s tractor beam that attracts small objects—coins, keys, food, toddlers, etc.

That’s not such a bad thing. At least you know where to look if anything goes missing. (And it’s a lot cheaper than hiring a babysitter.) The problem is trying to get everything out again. If you’re lucky, you’ll just need to remove the cushions. But with some sofas you’ll need a screwdriver, some rope, and a crash course on abseiling.

And if it’s a sofa bed you also have to watch out for…

The guillotine effect

Once upon a time, someone thought people would love to be able to turn their sofa into a bed. (This person obviously didn’t have any relatives.) So they came up with a system of springs, hinges and levers that, with just a gentle pull, could turn an ordinary sofa into a guillotine.

Oh sure, if you pull with a certain force and place your fingers in certain positions you may also be able to turn it into a bed. But it’s more likely your unexpected guests will get to sleep in your bed while you’re at the hospital getting your fingers sewn back on.

Fortunately you don’t have to worry about any of this if you hire a sofa or sofa bed from Home Appliance Rentals. They’ll quickly show you how to change it from a sofa to a bed (and vice-versa) while keeping all your digits intact.

Best of all, you won’t have to go without the essentials (electricity, food, cable television) to buy one. In fact, you can probably pay the weekly fee with your loose change.

There should be plenty under the cushions.