Our dishwasher broke about a month ago. The thing was a piece o' junk- you had to rinse every particle of food off to the nth degree before loading it into the dishwasher for final sterilization, hoping that a dish wouldn't come out looking worse than when it went in. The wheels were constantly falling off and rolling away or breaking altogether, not to mention the top rack, which was so rickety it required the strength of a bear to pull it out. It was loud enough that no conversations, piano practicing, or tv watching could coincide with a cycle. So when it stopped draining, we decided we'd had enough and went for a new one. We had to wash dishes by hand for a couple days and the girls gleefully washed and rinsed their Friday night dish duty.
We went 4 1/2 years without a dishwasher, and it wasn't the end of the world, but I was very happy to have one when we moved to student housing in Boston. By that time, I had learned to be a Dish Stinge, trying to conserve as many dishes as possible and cook without dirtying more than was absolutely necessary. Which takes more time, but I'd rather spend the time cooking than cleaning if you haven't noticed by now.
Although my contribution was probably extremely minimal, my mother assigned me to a dishwashing team with my 13-year-old sister Paula when I was a mature 5 years old, a point of which I have reminded my children often. I spent a lot of dish-team years with my brother Craig, and most of the memories there are of us quarreling over who was doing what and which jobs were the hardest. He finally got sick of my pettiness and told me to do whatever and get out of the kitchen. Shortly after that, Mom assigned us all our own nights and we only had to harrass the sibling who was assigned to clear the table. (In fact, once Brian called me home from a friend's house -by looking up the number in my bizzare calculator- just to clear the table.) Even the table-clearing job was eventually joined to the dishes, to Neil's chagrin, as he couldn't really justify waking up the 4 year old at midnight, when he got around to doing the dishes. Doing the dishes was such an enormous task that I always put it on Monday nights, when I had to be home anyway, and Sunday dishes were split into multiple loads.
When I was a missionary, a couple in my last area told me about how they never put in a dishwasher because they wanted that time for their kids to work together cleaning the kitchen, and when the children left home, they enjoyed the process as a couple. Those are some pretty rose-tinted glasses, I thought. Doing the dishes is not a big deal to me now, but I'll take any shortcut or help that I can to clean up the kitchen. So we bought a new dishwasher and while it is not much quieter than the previous one (and emitting a strange, treble D# the entire cycle), it's nice to have around again.
Although those little girls had a great time working together. For once.
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Sometimes I would stare at myself in the big west window and pretend I was on a cooking show, except I was doing the dishes instead. And when I worked with Tyler, we would play a 'game' that consisted of one of us leaving for about 3 minutes while the other put one thing away and then the other person would have to guess what it was. Most of the time I would spend a good half hour sitting on the stool with my head in my hands. Dishes took a very, VERY long time.
Did any of you ever try the whole, "I need to go to the bathroom" bit, and then "sit on the toilet" for 20 minutes. Then, when you came out it would all be done by your team member? That's what my husband does still today! Also, I've never had a dishwasher that cleaned to my satisfaction, so I always end up completely cleaning them and then putting them in the dishwasher for "sterilization". Some things I'm pretty OCD about. Not a lot, but some.
Hmm this is actually a very engaging post (how did you make washing dishes so interesting?) We haven't had a dishwasher for 3 years now and the kids have started doing it as a job now. I never thought about it being a team effort, but that is a great idea. Right now the youngest dishwasher gets help from me or Steve. Hmmm good ideas Heloise.
I haven't learned to be stingy with dishes but I have learned to clean as I am cooking more. Steve does them the most in our house though so I gotta give a shout out to him (in case he stops by and reads this comment).
I remember how excited I was to be able to do the dishes for my first time ever. I was so naive. I think I'm the same as Heidi, what with sitting on the stool with my head in my hands. If I had to do the dishes for that night, my night was OVER. My friends would call me and ask, "Hey, you want to hang out tonight?"
"No, sorry, I have to do the dishes tonight. Forget ever seeing me again." If ever there was a suitable punishment for all my misdemeanors, doing the dishes was effective on me. Groudings' got NOTHIN' on doing the dishes. Mom would usually forget if I was grounded, anyway.
Ha! One of my finest moments.
By the way, it's your turn to load the dishwasher. Don't worry, I'll wash the tray.
Great post, especially with all the sibling comments. A lot of memories from the Hansens who hated doing dishes. Many a night I faked sleep to try to get out of it. That only worked once or twice.
I can't believe how long it used to take me to do the dishes, 2-3 hours sometimes. Once, I decided to just do it as fast as possible and I got it done in 15 minutes. After that, I just cranked it out as fast as possible like a bandaid pull. Even though it wasn't really my best work, it was "Hansen clean".
i hope you used the whirlpool discount to get your dishwasher! we bought a new one about a year ago and got a great deal by using the discount!
One of Scott's favorite stories is the time he went to unload the dishwasher when we were visiting after Brian and Kent had done the dishes. Not one but two waffle irons were sitting in the top rack of the dishwasher having gone through an entire cycle. I think they even still worked afterwards.
Yeah, I hear you about liking dish help. In fact, the one year we had no dishwasher, T noticed he was doing most of the dishes. I just HATE doing them by hand. And even now that we have a dishwasher (it's a must in our book), my hubby is still on dish duty if he's home in the evening. And if he's not, I'm not beyond leaving them til morning when I have the strength to face them. Funny memories of working with your siblings. It brought back memories of my own. Congrats on your new machine!
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