Thanksgiving Advent, Day Seventeen: Dishwashers etc.

[swan_tower]

I lived for about five years in places without a dishwasher. (Well, longer than that -- but the four years in college don't count, since all I had to do was dump my tray at the appropriate spot in the dining hall.)

I am so very, very thankful to have one again.

Dishes fall into that deeply annoying category of "didn't I just do this chore?" No sooner have you cleaned them up than, oh look, there's another dirty plate. Laundry is the same way, and words cannot express how glad I am that I've never had to do that by hand. The one time I ever tried was with a pair of trousers when I was at a field station in the middle of the rainforest in Costa Rica; I got about a minute in, very feebly, before a pair of hands appeared in my field of vision and took the soap and trousers away. I watched the very nice Costa Rican lady do what my fourteen-year-old self could not, and marveled as if she were turning water in to wine. Combine that with my reading about what it used to take to do laundry in the pre-washing-machine past . . . yeah. There are entire months of my life that have been saved by me not having to do laundry by hand.

Dishwashers. Laundry machines. Vacuum cleaners. Hell, showers -- even bathing used to be a bigger undertaking, back when you had to heat the water and fill the tub and so on. Be thankful, people. Be very, very thankful.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Among other things, lack of a dishwasher makes one even more likely to opt for foods that don't involve plates (like microwavable stuff, or eating out).

[kurayami-hime.livejournal.com]

Let's, um, pretend that lunch wasn't a big ol' plate of microwavable fried rice then, shall we? I do take steps to avoid scurvy though. The three dollar oranges I ate this week, for example. It was only going to be one orange, but the fruit vendor who waylaid me said it would be lonely. Thus, I ended up with two for 500 yen.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wow. I see what you and starlady38 mean about fruit being expensive over there.

[kurayami-hime.livejournal.com]

The oranges did come with stickers saying they were "specially selected." But, yeah, most of my vitamin C comes from green tea, dried fruit, or vitamins.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I hope those were fabulous oranges!

One of the coolest benefits of my job is that we get free organic fruit deliveries at the office There's always a bowl that includes apples, pears, and oranges free for the taking. Sometimes we also get persimmons, pomagranates, kiwi, nectarines, apricots, peaches, and stuff, but usually those are only 1-2 each per week. Bananas are always the first thing to go, so I'm lucky if I ever get any.