Unusual appliance collector searches for museum benefactor

In the shadow of the Colorado Rockies lives a man with a mountainous dilemma. For years, Lee Maxwell has been collecting antique washing machines, but he’s running out of places to put them. 

When Maxwell was first interviewed by CBS News in 2018, he had built a warehouse to hold all the objects of his obsession. Now, there’s yet another warehouse behind that one, once again filled with nothing but hundreds of washing machines. 

“I do have a problem,” Maxwell, 92, admitted. He also has a Guinness World Record: In August 2019, he was awarded the honor for having the largest collection of washing machines in the United States. At the time, he had 1,350 devices.

His collection has soared to over 1,500 unique machines. 

The enterprise began innocently enough at a farm auction. He came home with so many washing machines that his wife, Barbara, wanted to hang him out to dry.

“She was thinking very bad things about me … that I lost my rocker, and I think, maybe I did,” Maxwell said. 

Some of Maxwell’s machines are powered by hand, and some have more unusual sources of energy, including one that is powered by sheep. Another model was never mass-produced, but was run by two children moving back and forth. 

Maxwell has restored all these devices himself. Once, he was an electrical engineer, but since retirement, he has spent 10 hours a day, seven days a week, with the washers. 

Five years ago, when he first spoke to CBS News, Maxwell said he was seeking a benefactor for a museum that can preserve the machines. But since then, he’s had “zero takers,” Maxwell said. As his collection has grown, the problem has only become more daunting. 

“I know I got plenty, but there’s always a beautiful one just around the corner,” Maxwell said. 

Despite his prowess with these machines, one constantly eludes him. It’s not in his first warehouse, or his second – it’s the washing machine in his own laundry room. That one, he said, he doesn’t even turn on.