The luxury of laundry machines

Kitchen sink laundry...

Rocks...

Almost 2 weeks ago, I started doing laundry and found a flood on the floor after the second wash load. I asked our neighbor across the street if we could use her machine, and she kindly obliged.
A week later, thinking the drain had been fixed, I started the laundry again. The laundry drain overflowed. We looked at the mesh lint strainer on the laundry output hose, and discovered a huge hole in the end of it. We imagined a big clump of lint blocking the drain. I felt responsible for not noticing the strainer was rusted out.
I held off on the laundry... but after 3 days of watching the contractor try various snakes, the kids were out of pants and socks and I was resorting to handwashing (at least our dryer still worked). I didn't want to trouble the neighbor again.
Today we discovered the blockage: rocks! And sand! It wasn't lint - it was construction debris. We are glad to have persisted in asking the contractor to clear the drain.
The machine is humming away now... Looking forward to fresh laundry!