Today, after its absence of too many weeks, the sweet song of the dishwasher is once again heard throughout the House. Music to my ears. Please forgive me, dishwasher, I’m sorry I ever called you “alleged dishwasher.” I swear that thing got offended and broke on purpose just to spite me. The whole broken aspect of the dishwasher was very minor and easily remedied and completely stupid that it was not resolved earlier, but I’ll discuss the specifics in a bit.

But first, I’d like to sing the praises of labor-saving devices in the home. With all the many things going on in my life and in my House, I don’t always (ok, hardly ever) get to keep the House as clean as I would like. Truth be told, I’m fairly lazy all on my own; left to my own devices, I would let the House get very cluttered. My clutter is of the books-and-papers variety and I have to force myself to go through it all and discard most of it when it gets overwhelming.

Now, add to my clutter one man and all the many messes that come standard with most of them. The trash bags that literally have to be blocking his way into the kitchen before he notices them. The towels and clothes that can land within inches of the hamper but never quite make it in. The cups and glasses and half-empty pop cans that land everywhere but my kitchen. The toilet paper rolls that never make onto the holder.

After eleven years, like water, we had reached our own level. We had found a comfort level somewhere between utter slob and clean-room. The dishes got washed, the food got cooked, the bathroom got cleaned, the clothes got laundered, all when they needed to happen. True, we did eat out somewhere close to all the time, but there was still plenty for both of us to do and plenty of us to do it.

Then, cue the dark foreboding music that signals doom, we had the kids. Kids are loud, smelly, messy little creatures that generate an enormous amount of filth. The astounding number of poopy or wet diapers, multiple clothing and bib changes for the spitters, multiple clothing changes for moms of the bazooka-barfers, meal-time mayhem, feces-throwing, and seemingly thousands of toys. And clean rooms never stay that way once the kids are out of bed.

So, I was not keeping up with the six thousand things that go along with keeping a household running smoothly. Then my nearly 10-year-old dishwasher broke. And all of a sudden the limited amount of housework I was able to stay on top of–got on top of me. I took my household labor-saving devices for granted and even grumbled about them when they didn’t deliver absolute perfection. Then one of them left me. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a little piece of plastic less than two inches long, but it presaged the collapse of my rickety little attempts at order. The plastic retaining bolt that attaches the lower spray arm assembly to the bottom of the dishwasher came apart–the threaded part detached from the top. I found a place online that carried a replacement part but, as the threaded half of the bolt was still lodged in the machine and I didn’t know how to remove it, I didn’t order it.

How hard can it be to do all the dishes by hand? I don’t know how housewives did this job a hundred years ago, before dishwashers and vacuums and washing machines and Swiffers. Cleaning up after the meals was arguably one of the easiest parts of the job for your average early 1900’s housewife, even without hot and cold running water. Here am I, spoiled little 21st century mom, beaten to a pulp by a sink full of dishes when my 100-years-ago doppelganger was extremely fortunate if she had one of the first electric washing machines, called The Thor, which was first mass-marketed in 1908. If she didn’t, laundry was a hard, heavy, all-day task. A sink full of dishes probably looked something like a trip down easy street to my past-times counterpart.

But to me, a sink full of dirty dishes meant too much time spent scrubbing by hand, not being able to keep an ear open to kids for too long, and a sopping wet shirt. Finally, after a busy holiday weekend during which I had no time to give over to hand-washing dishes, I decided to get serious about fixing my dishwasher. Now follows the embarrassing part of my sad tale. The part which has provided an inordinate amount of amusement for my husband.

I was convinced that the threaded part of the bolt was well and truly stuck down in and its removal called for some highly original thinking from yours truly. Rube Goldberg would be so proud of me. I had an elaborate scheme involving keyhole saws, epoxy, and pliers all planned out. Hubby scoffed at my idea, so I told him “Fine, you get in there and you figure out how to get the damn thing out!” He didn’t. Until Sunday when I couldn’t take it anymore and I made him take a look at it. So he gets in there, I hold the flashlight on it, and he starts poking around what’s left of the bolt. Then he says, “This seems kind of soft, I wonder if I could just pry it out?” He gets a butter knife out of the drawer, has me hold the light just so, and starts doing something. I crouch down so I can see and he’s turning the butter knife, using it like a big screwdriver and just twisting the damnable think out! With a butter knife! !!!! So I say, “You are not!” Infuriating.

I called around today and found a place that carries that sort of thing and got to fix my dishwasher! But not before enduring much teasing at the hands of my husband and certainly not before he told the embarrassing tale to everybody he ran into at work this morning. Including the part about my Rube Goldberg ideas for removing the offending bolt. I asked him if everybody thinks I’m crazy now, he said that they just think I’m a girl, apparently forgetting that Goldberg himself was a, um, himself. Then he says, “Wait, wait. I just want to tell the story one more time!” And he does, including bits about “Epoxy and Popsicle sticks!” and “It took me, literally, under 60 seconds to take it out! With a butter knife!”

Well, it may have taken him under a minute to remove something that I had a hare-brained scheme all lined up to do the job, but it took me weeks just to get him in there to look at the thing. I seriously don’t know who I’m more peeved at–myself for all my complicated plans or him for removing the thing so easily. With a butter knife!

Anyway, I now have a working dishwasher again, and an empty sink. Because of a butter knife!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under Kitchen/Dining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.