My kitchen no longer has an ‘island’ that is a free-floating, unwrapped, uninstalled, uninstallable dishwasher. It only took two months, an electrician’s visit, and two visits from the dishwasher installation individuals, much of it clustered during daycare’s winter break, but there is no longer the world’s most makeshift attempt at a handwashing station, involving slightly moist bar mops and what were, in retrospect, not particularly robust sponges. It didn’t make sense to invest in what was meant to be a very temporary situation, in money or effort. But.
Was it that years of dishwasher-having made me forget how to wash dishes efficiently the lo-tech way? Or that life with a 3-year-old in a pandemic (and do not get me started on pumping materials, pacifiers…) produces one or two more dishes than whatever my now-husband and I did when, say, living in Brooklyn as grad students and frequently eating meals out? Was it sleep deprivation causing it to take me an hour to wash a fork?
Whatever the case, I know that not everyone has a dishwasher. I have been the not-everyone, and do know that dishwasherlessness does not dominate everyone’s life. (There was even the Take, on the eve of my own dishwasher crisis, about how dishwashers are bad actually.) It is not, in theory, the biggest challenge even I personally have faced in recent months, and yet somehow, not having a dishwasher took over everything, this eternally re-filthy set of dishes, needing to be dealt with before getting joined by their brethren, thus sucking up the milliseconds of free time life with infant and toddler allows. (Did you know that the material that doesn’t break if dropped by a small child is also impossible to remove grease from by hand? Did you?)
No, the new dishwasher will not solve everything. It does not address skyrocketing Omicron, for which the adults still need boosters (but soon, soon!) and the children are too young to vaccinate. Sleep is still largely elusive. And I accidentally deleted rather than paused my Twitter account - of no great consequence, but it’s much more chic to do something like that intentionally. (Here’s the new one.) But the thing is done.
Congratulations on prevailing on home ownership (and that most wondrous other event) travails!
I do so hope that you get to the other side of the street soon, both literally and metaphorically.
Thanks for sharing this journey.
You have 30 days to reactivate a deleted twitter account