Dish on the Dishwasher

There are some things in this world that I am very good at.  Dishes is not one of them.  You may be wondering how someone can be "bad" at washing dishes.  I have wondered this myself and I really have no explanation.  I just know that when I hand wash dishes, they rarely come out clean.  This was true at age 12 (when my parents thought I was trying to force them into getting a dish washer to keep them from getting poisoned) and it is true at 31.

Thankfully we have a dishwasher.  However, our machine has proven not to be the most powerful or efficient machine.  Over the last few months, I have noticed that our glasses have gotten progressively more cloudy and more food is left behind after each load.   In order to lessen the cloud formation on our dishes, I have increased the amount of pre-rincing but to no avail.  I even tried loading the dishes only on the bottom shelf to lessen the washing burden.  No luck.  This weekend I officially decided that it was ridiculous to keep using it.  The dishwasher was worthless; I would become the dishwasher.

I did not want to complain about the dishwasher.  It was not Chris's fault the thing did not work.  Instead I just figured we would deal with it when we had a chance and I would try not to grumble.  Chris noticed that I was not putting dishes in the dishwasher.  He also noticed a few flecks of food on the newly hand washed dishes......  no comment from either one of us.  We briefly looked at dishwashers at the Home Despot on Sunday but none called to us so we did not buy one.  We were both being completely breezy about the whole situation.

This is where my story gets good.  Monday night I had a work dinner that caused me to get home late, around 9 pm.    When I got home, Chris had almost completely finished installing our new dishwasher.  Unbeknownst to me,  he went to the store after work, bought a new dishwasher, carried it in himself, and installed it- all while I was out of the house.  When I got home, even the huge box was on its way out the door.  Incredible.  So stress free; such a pleasure!  I am so impressed with him and appreciative that he just took care of it and tried to make it as painless as possible for me.

We ran our first load of dishes right before we went to sleep.  The new dishwasher was silent; we could hardily believe it was actually doing anything to the pile of dirty dishes.  The next morning I heard Chris yell to me in an excited voice "want to open the dishwasher with me to see how clean they are!"  Yes honey, I would like nothing more.  Into the kitchen we go- together -to peer into the new machine.  With baited breath we dropped the door and revealed 2 levels of spotless dishes. We gazed at each other with love and happiness in our eyes and closed to door.

"Great job hon" I said, "I think you know where they all go?" ;)


Just kidding! Many thanks to Chris!  May all the home installation projects be this breezy!