OLD HABITS DIE HARD

THIS NEW FANGLED DISHWASHER THINGY

HeeHoo bought me a dishwasher the other day. Possibly long overdue, but the last time he was despatched with his partner in crime, HeeHoo Must Fish, to buy a dishwasher, they came home with a flat screen television !!

Anyhow, many months later, a brand spanking new dishwasher arrived and it was suitably installed with the lid opening right in front of the garage door, so one has to be ultra careful when opening the door, one's timing had to be perfect !!

Now these things are frightening, I have been in homes where dishwashers are treated with more respect than the family car.

Does one rinse the plates before putting them in the dish washer or does one not ?

Does one place the knives points up or points down ?

Does one run the cycle immediately or can one wait till the darn thing is full ?

Everyone has his or her fixed convictions on how a dishwasher should be loaded, and so I was advised, berated and abused verbally for some months by the dishwasher pundits.

Now to my economical mind, it has always been easy enough to rinse plates and cups etc as one uses them. Our family drinks the most tea and coffee in the world, and we would need a hundred tea and coffee cups or they would all end up in the dish washer.

This particular masterpiece of engineering does a "half load" but the book does not say if it washes a - the top half ? b- the bottom half ? c- if it is only half full ? d- or maybe if it is only half empty ???

(The manual must have been written by a man) mutter mutter.

And also to keep it running smoothly it will take up half of my house keeping budget. Instead of a monthly bottle of Sunlight dishwasher, I now use dish washing tablets, rinse aid, salt, finishing aid and so on and so forth.

And all that electricity ? It uses kilowatts galore to run, and my water bill has soared...... mutter mutter.

Now the family has insisted that I use this new toy and watches me beadily to see if I dare to transgress. They being first worlders, will not allow their third world mother to wash the dishes by hand any more. I guess they feel guilty if I sweat over the sink while they have their feet up in front of the Telly.

I tried to hide the dirty dishes in the cupboard until they went to bed but they caught me red handed. "Use the dish washer Mum" they shriek in gleeful chorus !!

I firmly believe though that they have missed something here. Surely their small motor skills will suffer if they have not had to dexterously try and get the grime out of a tea cup? What about ones triceps, should not one continue to work them by vigorously scrubbing those pans clean ?

The silly thing is, when one really needs the dish washer, when one has those giant fun filled dinner parties, the darn contraption is too small to take all the hundreds of dishes at any rate.

And another thing, plates and cups and saucers are a cinch to wash, what I need is a dish washer that will was those ugly grimy roasting pans and saucepans gummed up with the remnants of my famous cheese souffle !!

But no dish washer on this earth will get some of my pans clean ! I have some beauties that came up with Aunty Poppy in the ox wagon during the Rindepest. Not easy to get them clean at the best of times, it still takes a lot of huffing and puffing and super human manual elbow grease doesn't it ?

In fact a little bit of superhuman grime moving effort never did anyone any harm. Modern marriages might be made to last a lot longer if these young brides were made to get grips with some real hard labour ...

And as for HeeHoo's new birthday Reidel wine glasses, they are not allowed anywhere near the dishwasher but have to be lovingly hand washed and dried as if they were a brand new puppy !!

So all in all, this here dish washer, as far as I am concerned, is a bit of a White Elephant, give me the old fashioned way any day. On with the rubber gloves, turn up the mellows on the old steam radio, and sing to those dishes in the kitchen sink, its a whole lot easier and a lot more fun.