Thursday, April 5, 2007

Privilege

My mother always had a dishwasher. Every one of our five billion different houses that I grew up in (cause my parents thought it was a good idea to have their kids change schools every fourth day) had a dishwasher. So, doing dishes meant quick rinse then shove in dishwasher. You see, dishwashers don't only clean dishes they function as a storage unit for dirty dishes.

Every apt. I rented before moving to Los Angeles had a dishwasher. Yes, the trade off for cookie cutter living in the burbs is new appliances. None of my apts in Los Angeles had dishwashers. Then we bought the condo which, despite its flaws, had a dishwasher. And when we got the hell out of the condo, we convinced our landlady of My Innisfree to put one in. Then we bought the house and I thought yeah I can live without a dishwasher for a few years. But no, I can't I Can't I don't want to do one more load of dishes by hand It fucking sucks and if that makes me a spineless wimp of a homeowner of a house that hasn't been updated since 1926 then so be it.

Look, this is the second load from one night's dinner:

and I still have all this to do:


I don't get it. I remember my grandparents having entire Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas dinners for 20 in their home and washing the dishes afterward by hand. Is there some technique I'm missing? A dinner for two can take me days of dishes to clean. How is this possible? I just want a dishwasher. There, I said it. And I don't mean a person to do my dishes (a job I had at a sports bar in vegas when I was a teenager). I want an automatic dishwasher---oh, the luxury.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't blame you for wanting a dishwasher -- our last condo (a rental) had a really sucky dishwasher, so I still had to do all our dishes by hand. Anymore though, I STILL do dishes constantly, even with the awesome dishwasher we got when we bought this house (sometimes 3 loads a day -- yeah, you read that right)! Basically, doing dishes totally sucks ass, any way you dice it!

Amy said...

eRRRR. I just hate them. I have a sink full waiting for me as I type this. To me its not just the fact that I have to do them by hand its also that they have to sit in the sink before I get them done which is gross. Dishwashers hide that ugliness. I know, I'm pretty fixated on this right now.

Anonymous said...

you will definately need one if you ever have a baby. after the babe arrived, my hands were actually bleeding at one point from the constant bottle washing. the payoff is, i guess, that some day she will do the dishes for us (or be the one to load the dishwasher, a chore that I actually don't like either)

Amy said...

I hate top admit this but lack of dishwasher is near the top of the list for why I don't have kids. That, and I am out of the house for about 10 hours a day...and I am married to a dreamer.

Anonymous said...

I agree about the hiding the dishes aspect. I HATE it when dishes are in the sink! It drives me nuts! When my baby was born, we didn't have a dishwasher, which really sucked.