The Dishwasher

I know its odd that a kitchen appliance would be of any true importance in a person's life, but as of late, I have found that the dishwasher and my interactions with it tell me a lot about myself.

As long as I can remember, my house always had a dishwasher in it. I learned to load and unload it at an early age and it was one of the chores that my sister and I would do. Although I was young, I remember pretty vividly actually, the day we had a new dishwasher installed in our kitchen. It was an exciting day, as my parents had become tired of washing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher since the one we had was not the best. The new dishwasher (which is still in use in my mother's kitchen) was a VERY expensive, Swedish import. Remember the TV commercial where the woman puts a dish with an entire cake in the dishwasher and the plate comes out perfectly clean? That is what this dishwasher was like and honestly still works as well to this day. Our family very much enjoyed putting dishes into the dishwasher without rinsing them at all and having them come out clean. So I learned to use the dishwasher in this way. When friends came over and wanted to help with the dishes, I'd have to explain to them that, "No, you don't have to rinse your dishes before you put them into the washer; we have an expensive, Swedish dishwasher that doesn't require that." How cool I thought that was. Apparently the fact that my dishwasher did not require your dishes to be rinsed made me better than you. How ridiculous. This did pose somewhat of a problem however as I got older and used other dishwashers. At friends houses, I would just put my dish directly into the dishwasher without rinsing, only to be looked at funny and then told that there was no way the dishes would come out clean unless I rinsed them first. Spoiled I was with our expensive, Swedish dishwasher. So that is my history with our dishwasher.
As I got older, I'd load and unload the dishwasher often. Although my parents never required us to do too many chores, I felt that this would help my mother out even in the smallest way. I never really took too much notice of the way I performed this chore. I just completed the task and that was that.

In college, I moved into an apartment that *gasp* did not have a dishwasher! What!? How ridiculous that in 2007, a home did not have a dishwasher. I'd soon find out that this was one of the many ways in which I was a very privileged child. I barely knew what to do with myself. I knew how to wash dishes the "old-fashioned" way as my family had upgraded beautiful All-Clad pots and pans when I was a teen that in no universe were allowed to be put into the dishwasher. But how inconvenient to have to wash everything! On top of that, I had a roommate who loved to cook but not to clean so our tiny sink would fill all too quickly with dirty dishes which I just despised.

I was so relieved when I graduated college and moved into an apartment with a dishwasher. I shared this apartment with four other girls who all kept very clean and we all did our part to handle the dishes. But now I am in a new situation, which has brought me to writing about my relationship with the dishwasher. Now, I'm always comparing the dishwashers I use and have had in the kitchens of the apartments I've lived in to the expensive, Swedish one in my mother's house. None ever compare. I'm not sure if that is true because I have built the one in my home up so much or they literally do not work as well. Either way, the dishwasher in the home I currently occupy is definitely the latter.

I live in a townhouse that is only a year and a half old but was clearly built as cheaply as possible and this includes the dishwasher that is installed in the kitchen. But the quality of the appliance is not what caused me to begin this post. I share the aforementioned townhouse with four other people. Three are male and one female. The female is not currently in the home, so I am the only girl with three boys. Although they are not the cleanest of men, they are not filthy either. Because there are so many of us sharing the space in the home, specifically the kitchen, everyone tries to keep things tidy and clean up after themselves. In addition, the three male roommates all know how to load, run and unload the dishwasher and all do perform the tasks. However, I clearly have some sort of affinity to organizing the dishes in said dishwasher to my liking.

Every single day, often more than once, I open the door and find the dishes are organized in some (to me) ridiculous manner. Bowls where plates should be, glasses teetering off one of the parts of the top rack meant to hold them up. How it makes me cringe! I spend at least ten minutes everyday arranging and re-arranging the dishes within the washer. I've also noticed that I will move all the dishes around to where I think they should be. Plates go in a certain area, bowls another and when a large pot or pan makes me change it up, I spend a good amount of time figuring out how to make it work within my pre-existing pattern. Is my way the most organized and efficient? I would answer yes but honestly, I don't know. It may be that I put them that way because I want them that way, not because it is uses less space. What's worse is that because this dishwasher is not of the highest quality, I will often end up sacrificing the cleanliness of the dishes in order to organize them my way. In other words, putting the dishes so close together or in ways that they just do not get as clean as they would, had they more space. It has even gone so far as my fiance literally taking dishes out of my hand and telling me to stop trying to re-arrange them and just run the washer. Or telling me to "just leave that one out and run it on the next load." LEAVE IT OUT!? Why on earth would I do that when I know I can manage to make it fit somewhere! Talk about being a control freak.

Now, when I began to notice myself rolling my eyes or becoming frustrated every time I opened that door, I wondered why? The dishes have made it into the dishwasher and are not in the sink. Everyone does help to start and empty the dishwasher. Why then, did I have a problem with how the dishes are organized within those racks? I've always been a person who liked things well organized. My mother has told me that even as a child, I always organized my toys and other things very meticulously. Although recent study has shown that to be a sign of autism or OCD, I just liked things a certain way. I have grown up to like organization but honestly I am not such a neat freak that its very obvious. In the same vein, I've found that I love puzzles and puzzle games like those played to waste time on the computer. Although, when learning I tend to do better with concepts that use the right side of the brain, when it comes to day to day life, I am definitely prone to use my left side, being more logical and sequential. So this begs the question, is my relationship with the dishwasher just exciting the part of me that likes puzzles or is it the part of me that wants to be in control of something? Honestly, I think its a little of both. Either way, its funny to me that the dishwasher, a kitchen appliance of all things would bring all of this out of me. It just goes to show you, its the little things that tell you the most about yourself.

Thanks for reading.