My dishwasher's still broken.
This equates to an extra 45 minutes of standing at the sink every day in order to stay "on top of" the dishes and pans and glasses (so many glasses! How many cups of water can 3 kids drink in 1 day? Seriously! I wash about 20 cups a day. For 5 people!).
And I know I shouldn't bitch about it. I am grateful that I have over 20 glasses and mugs and cups from which my family can drink the plentiful, clean, running water. I am grateful that my kids LIKE water to begin with and not just pop or juice. But do you know how ridiculous I feel, soaping and scrubbing and rinsing 20 glasses that only had water in them to begin with?!?
The tree outside my kitchen window is starting to show signs of spring. Not buds or leaves, but definitely a more... "spring-ish" look to it. Maybe it's all the finches that are hopping around on its branches, searching for the bird feeder that fell off last autumn. Poor finches. Their local hot spot for thistle seed is currently undergoing renovations. It'll probably take us another 2 years to put up a new hanging bag of seed, guys...
All this extra time spent with my arms in the hot foam that only generic dish soap can create causes my mind to wander and ponder; just think about how many hundreds of millions of women who have washed and soaped and scoured their own families' dishes throughout the existence of mankind. It's such a basic chore. So necessary but unloved. Though I'd take standing at the sink, looking out at the frustrated and hungry birds any day over the bending and lifting of loading the damn washer and dryer. We can't even have a clothesline in our subdivision. It goes against the codes that I knew about when we signed the papers, but I wonder if I'd use one if we could? Just having the rule against it makes the idea of hanging the wash out to dry seem... exotic. Can't you just picture me snapping freshly laundered towels and t-shirts as I expertly clip them to a taught line in the gentle breezes? All while my children race about the yard (in slow motion, naturally) with oversized bubble-wands and those ribbons on sticks that you see on the Olympics.
Do they still do the Rhythmic gymnastics? It used to fascinate me...
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27 comments:
Growing up, my mom had a one-water-glass-per-day rule. She'd catch us heading towards the cupboard to grab a clean glass and send us away to find our glass from earlier in the day. If we repeatedly couldn't remember which cup was ours (even though we hardly had two which matched), we'd be offered a rubber band to put around it. I know that it sounds silly, but one of the pure guilty pleasures of being an adult and no longer living under my parents' rules is getting to use as many water glasses each day as I want. We don't have kids yet, but I fully intend to enforce the one-water-glass-per-day rule on my kids. It cuts down on dirty dishes, and honestly adulthood is better because there are a few silly things that I can do now that I wasn't allowed to do as a kid.
Yep, one glass per day. Especially if it's only water. If they can't keep track of which is theirs, I love Lisa's rubber band idea! Each child would have his or her own color rubber band and they'd know which glass was theirs! You could also make a craft project (homeschool art, FTW!) of creating their own personalized coasters to keep on the counter and rest their cup on between uses.
Actually, now that I think about it, I want to do that project with my kids!!
My kids each get a coloured glass in the morning... so that they know which one is theirs for the day!! It also means that the cups can go outside (since they are palstic..... red, blue, orange, etc...), without having to worry about them breaking!!
You could try fancy water bottles too, then they can even travel with them!!
I feel the same way about alpacas, fences and in-ground pools. If there weren't rules against them, I probably wouldn't care less. But because I can't? Oh how I want...
Oh! And if it was me...I'd buy a stack of plastic cups and a marker to write names on those cups until the dishwasher is fixed/replaced.
Sorry polar bears, but it's true.
I've thought before about how much the mommy's job hasn't changed a whole lot over the centuries. Sure, we now have appliances that change the way we do our household tasks, but the same tasks have to be done. And yes, these things are so repetitive and unnoticed, but imagine what your family would look like if we decided not to do them even for a day or two. I'd venture to say they'd start to appreciate these things very much!
The one thing on earth that truly evades me (besides programming the VCR we don't use anymore) is properly loading the dishwasher. Invariably, when I try to load it, LM (Love Muffin) will re-position everything in it, because unlike me, she knows how to load it properly. At least I know how to put the soap in.
Whenever I wash up, which is so rare I could count the times on one non-wrinkly hand, I love it. It brings me back to the Good Ol' Days when we weren't all bothered with New Fangly Stuff like 'puters and 'pods. I love it 'cos I get to dream, like you just did. I love the warm water and the whole zen thing that comes over me.
BUT. When the dishwasher's broken, there's not so much love. Love for maybe ten washes. Then it's over. You can't get the repair happening fast enough. I know. I'm so fickle!
I hope your zen thing, your sweet dishwashing dreams last a bit longer than mine do! :)
(Oh, and without it being a rule, we drink from the same glasses all day too. Unless we don't, but mostly we do! Which makes so much sense…)
Have you ever heard of Tervis Tumblers? They are these awesome, indestructible cups (if one breaks, they will replace it for free). You can buy travel lids for them in different colors. Every morning, my kids get their cup with their colored lid and that is their cup for the day. I would go nuts if they got new cups each time they got a drink.
Our dishwasher isn't working right now either, big bummer as it is new. I don't mind washing dishes by hand, but I'm glad I don't have to do it all the time.
I always mean to implement a one-cup-a-day rule, but I never pull it off. My husband uses the same cup, but it drives me nuts to have sitting near the sink all the time so maybe I couldn't handle having five cups sitting there all day long.
Wishing you good thoughts as you wash!
The rubber band thing is a good idea... I'm considering it, but that means that I have to enforce it, too, right?
I am thinking that having the KIDS wash the cups sounds like a better idea, right now... Oh yeah. NICE.
We are non dishwasher folk. As a matter of fact, our apartment is the disability unit engineered for someone in a wheelchair. Everything is LOW. Even the sink. I get shoulder aches AND a backache from doing dishes. It so sucks.
I love your thoughts on dishwashing. I shared similar thoughts while making pulled pork. I accidentally bought a roast with a bone in so had to hack the meat off. Disgusting yet somehow timeless.
And we go through every single piece of our 12 place settings of silverware every damn day!
I got sucked into your fantasy of hanging clothes on the line outside. Perhaps the finches could help and hold the clothes there while they dried, just like in Snow White. Ahhhh to dream.
Hey check out Little Tech Girls plan for Moms' Night Out. I'm going, you should too!
Ha! I love your rambling, stream-of-thought posts.
What about giving each kid a drink bottle they can keep out on the counter?
And the clothesline? A little overrated sometimes. Especially when it starts to rain and you forget you have clothes out.
OMG! I love LOVE freshly dried laundry outside. And I love LOVE rhythmic gymnastics.
This reminds me of when I was single. I either used paper plates or relied on the same few dishes to stay relatively clean.
I hate, hate, hate doing dishes. It was my chore growing up and it sucks.
No dishwasher? How awful!
I woudl so be implementing that one glass per day rule that Lisa mentioined :)
I love our clothesline, but it does seem like extra work.
Trust me, you are not missing much :)
Life is not life without a dishwasher!
Up here in Cairns a tumble dryer is another friend during the wet season!
Think of all the productive time with kids you can have whilst not washing the dishes (don't worry, you'll get the machine fixed soon!).
Please drop over to our family friendly blog with free resources of ideas to try out with kids when you have a chance.
http://beourbest.blogspot.com/
our new house came with a clothes line in the backyard and I used it ALL summer long. Can't wait to start using it regularly again. I love to save money anyway I can.
Our dishwsher borke when our girls were infants. We went through moer than 20 bottles a day. The woman at the repair shop said to me -- while I was complaining that they had been out three times and couldn't figure out the problem -- "I didn't have a dishawasher when my childrne were infants." I think she thought that would make me feel better, so she was a bit surprised that I was still mad. I hope your dishwasher gets fixed soon.
I'm just jealous you have a window to look out of while you wash. I stare at a brown wall and a dusty wreath. Oh, and it's brown because we painted it that color, not because it's dirty. Just, um, to be clear. =>
You let them get away with four glasses per person? Wow. My mom used to make us use the same glass for 2-3 days. And now that I think about it, I sorta still do. I cart the same water bottle around for days refilling it before I make my husband ummm wash it by hand. Ahem.
Glorious info here. This attention-grabbing put up made me smile. Maybe for those who throw in a couple of pictures it’s going to make the whole thing more interesting. Anyway, in my language, there are usually not a lot good supply like this.
I saw a really cool idea somewhere in which you can put a cork mat on the counter with 5 circles (in your case drawn on it). Each circle has a family member's name written under it, and when they are done with their glass for the time being, they put their glass on the cork mat. When they want more water, they just go reuse the same glass. Genius!
I know how you feel though. I even catch myself getting down a new glass out of habit when I already had one out.
I think this got so many comments because its hysterical to hear how your brain ticks....not just because you were out of town. ;) BTW....e-mailing you a possible crafty solution for the cup thing.
Loved reading your stream of thought - it took me away from my desk at work for a while. I actually began to think I would prefer doing dishes to being at work! I can't wait until I have the cup problem . . . I am sick of bottle-washing :-)
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