Glad my comments helped although I wish the SS/white option was available now since I need appliances now. It's always puzzled me that it hasn't been more readily (Viking and American Range ranges come in white/SS but that's about it I think). It's not something new - look to the vintage ranges with their white/chrome mix. Classic finishes and yet it would be right at home in today's kitchens. I'm not sure what you mean by matte silver. Aren't some companies already doing this? I think they call it titanium or platinum or something along that line. Or do you mean a brighter, lighter finish than that? I'd like that. Some of the gray tones I've seen are awfully dull and on the dark side, at least to my eye. Then again, I'm not a fan of black appliances. Interesting to read that some people who have SS wish they had white. I don't think SS is a trend but I do think the huge predominance of SS in the market is a trend. I sure hope to see a swing towards more balanced options for us consumers.

You GO, @Kathy Linn! I resolved early-on in our kitchen design to adopt a "no-stainless" policy (more for the looks than the upkeep), and so set out to find an antique, enameled stove (for cleanability in addition to looks) and even went with copper sinks to avoid SS. My first kitchen was all-white when we bought the house, and not really in a good way - laminate countertops and mdf cabinets in addition to white appliances. It was more work keeping the countertops white than the fridge (although the door handle did yellow with time) but I was done with white by the time we moved. For our build I settled on a 1929 Glenwood, restored at a shop outside Boston. It was a splurge but like yours (which is also very handsome) one we'll never need to replace. I'd like to think if consumers start throwing the SS junk back in appliance companies' (and designers') faces and going with restored antiques or otherwise reliable, easy-to-clean appliances with actual color options that we don't have to replace after 5-10 years, maybe they'll stop telling us what we should want and start producing quality again.

While Joe H is right, it's also true that there are buyers who want to do up the kitchen themselves and don't want your appliances even if they're brand new. They're looking for the house that needs a new kitchen because they don't wan to pay top dollar for your updates just to tear it out. Your house won't show well with one mismatched color appliance, unless it's a feature, like a blue fridge or a black French range, but you'll have plenty of time to correct that in ten years. The truth is that in ten years, your kitchen will be considered old, and your appliances from this year will be considered very old. The trick to selling a ten year old kitchen without losing more than the cost of a basic update on the price is to make it a very nice old kitchen. Empty most of what's stored there into storage, leaving only a few dishes and today's pantry needs in the cupboards, clear every bit of clutter off the counter and walls, and empty any open storage (shelves, potracks, hooks, etc.). Put back one or two beautiful items for "staging" and "color". Then get a professional service in to clean it beyond your wildest dreams of cleanliness, including the back sides of freestanding appliances, and the little corners and crevices. Also, make sure all the knobs and handles are tight and clean, move any animals out of the house--you can leave a clean bowl to show that this is a good place to feed the dog, but move out the dog and the food--and don't cook anything. People want to see and smell CLEAN. Don't even bake cookies--have the neighbor do it, if you want people to smell hot cookies, but don't have any smell lingering around the oven. What sells in an older kitchen, in an older home, is the idea that a buyer could happily use it for another 3-5 years, and the only way to do that with a 10-15 year old kitchen, is to make it look and smell CLEAN like brand new. Which means it doesn't matter what color your appliances are, other than the mismatched DW, so long as they're not chipped or scratched, faded to yellow (which the plastic trim on white appliances can do, especially if exposed to sun), or downright ugly.

>>>"I wash kitchen towels once a week (I have a deep drawer in the kitchen that holds many) in hot water. Should I run hot more often? Hard to say without actually taking the washer apart to look at the outside of the drum and the inside of the containment tub in which the drum rotates. Residue build-ups vary with your home's water chemistry, how you have been dosing the detergent, how high a temperature the washer's "hot" setting yields, whether you use chlorine bleach, whether you use fabric softener, and other factors. Does your washer have a tub cleaning cycle? I'd run that at least monthly or whatever your washer's manual recommends. If your washer does not have a tub cleaning cycle, you can run an empty load with the hottest wash temperature and as many extra rinses as the machine will provide, a couple of cups of chlorine bleach, and no detergent. If you've never run a drum cleaning cycle before, I would start checking sudsing during the washing part of the cycle and during each rinse. If you see suds without needing to shine a flashlight through the window in the washer door to see them, your washer already has some build-up of residues and you'll probably want to run more cleaning cycles until you no longer see sudsing. If your washer drains (or can drain) into a laundry sink, that makes it even easier to check for sudsing. It's okay if you see sudsing in the wash cycle but you'll want to run another tub cleaning cycle if you see a lot of sudsing in the last rinse. If you find sudsing in your drum cleaning cycles, you also might want to check your towels (particularly bath towels) for residue build-up. (IME, those seem most apt to collect residues.) What I do is occasionally run a load of towels through a wash cycle without any detergent and check for sudsing.