I grew up washing dishes by hand.
The idea of a dishwasher never even entered
my mind.
We always washed dishes by
hand, and everyone I knew did the same.
It was a chore—usually despised—that simply had to be done at least
twice a day every day.
Paper plates
never entered the picture.
If they could
be gotten, they were far too expensive anyhow.
And what a waste!
One use and
tossed into the garbage?
Unheard
of.
Absolutely unheard of.
And so day in and day out, we all washed our dishes. Some of us complained louder than others, and
I was one of the complainers. Oh, how I hated
washing dishes! Surely, there were a
dozen other better and more important things I could be doing than washing
dishes. Surely, there were more pressing
matters at hand, things of an urgent nature.
Putting these things on hold simply to do dishes was irresponsible, I
would say—to anyone who would listen.
But mostly I just grumbled angrily to myself.
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| Vintage Corning Ware. |
Well, time passed as it always does, and one day I got
myself a dishwasher—a real dishwasher! I
was so happy, I was beside myself! I
loaded it up with dirty dishes, put in the soap, turned the dial, and the
pressed the button. And the magic
began. A machine washed my dishes for
me. Finally, I thought, my dreams had
come true. No more drudgery with the
dishes. No more toiling over the
sink. I could bake whatever I wanted and
not have to worry much about the cleanup.
This was progress.
Or so I thought.
Many years passed, and I went through several dishwashers. As soon as one broke, I immediately got
another because there was no way I was going to wash dishes by hand. I had better things to do. Funny thing is, though, I didn’t often do any
of those “better” things. I often
relaxed. Of course, there’s nothing
wrong with sitting down and relaxing, especially if you have worked hard all
day, but all those “important and urgent” things seemed to fly right out of the
window. I didn’t find myself getting
anything more done than I ordinarily already did.
And there was a strange dark side. The dishwasher had become a hiding
place. Anything unclean was hidden
inside it, to be washed at the end of the day (unless I had to run it twice,
which sometimes I did). It made my
kitchen appear cleaner than it actually was.
The counters and sink were clean because the dirt was hidden. If I wanted to use a certain bowl or dish
that was dirty, I had to use something else or improvise. Because once something was stuffed into the
hiding place, I could no longer acknowledge it existed until the machine
cleaned it again. A day’s worth of
dishes would slowly build up, moldering in the dark and closed space. In the back of my mind, there was always this
feeling of unfinished business.
Then one day something changed. I walked into my kitchen, and I realized it
wasn’t just a place where I did work or fed a crew. It was a place where I lived, where I spent a
great deal of time, where I pondered life.
It was a place where I made plans, calculated the good and bad in my
life, built a future. It was a place
where I laughed and cried, a place where I nourished myself and others. It was a place filled with so much love and
living. How could I have ever thought
that it was a place of drudgery? How
could I have been so blind?
What I did then, well, I pulled out the old dish rack and
set it up on the counter. Underneath it
I placed a clean white vintage kitchen towel.
I pulled all the dirty dishes out of the dishwasher and put them in the
sink, and then I filled up the basin with hot, soapy water. I washed all the dishes by hand, rinsed them,
and put them in the rack. Then I stood
back and watched them gleam in the sunshine that came through the window over
the sink. I did the same thing the next
day and the day after that.
I’ve never put a single dish in that dishwasher
again. It sits in my kitchen. Empty.
Barren. And somehow my life is
fuller now that I’ve been given my chores back, now that I’ve willingly taken
them on again. I do my best thinking
while I’m washing dishes, and I might as well confess that I talk out loud to
myself all the time while working in the kitchen. I make plans.
I solve problems. I come to peace
with people and things. Somehow washing
the dirt off the dishes also washes it out of my mind. Making things clean and orderly—and having
nothing dirty and hidden—makes it so much easier to make realistic everyday decisions,
and I find I don’t second-guess myself as much as I used to.
Who would have thought that washing dishes could do all
of that? If someone had told me so when
I was younger, I would have laughed in their face and rolled my eyes. I guess I had to learn the value—the deep and
abiding value—of ordinary daily chores. I
had to learn to choose them. I had to
learn how to appreciate the meaning of simple things. I had to learn the wisdom of a structured
day.
I don’t know why I changed and I don’t know how, and I’m
not sure it matters. Very often these
days, I find myself singing while washing dishes, and that is good enough for
me.
