A Small Journal Entry of a Home-Owner

Two things are guaranteed to happen twice a week in our house without fail: running the dishwasher and doing laundry. We run the dishwasher about twice a week (we seem to be roughly on a Wednesday/Sunday cycle), which I suppose isn't too bad given we're 2 grown-ups who cook and eat in our home 5-6 of the 7 days of the week. We also only have dish, drinking glasses, and silverware service for 8, so when you divide that by 2 people, we burn through the entirety of of cabinets' bounty in 3-4 days.

Laundry. Man, what a Sisyphean task. I'm hoping this will alleviate itself come warmer weather (that's a thing that will happen eventually, right? I mean, it's almost freaking April, and we got a dusting of snow last night!!!!), but every time I do laundry I do no fewer than 2 loads, and it is often in the 2-4 load range! In addition to going through essentially 2 outfits per weekday (workwear and then at-home/going-out wear), since it has been such a long and terribly cold winter, we have been wearing tons of layers, and tons of big, bulky, warming, tundra-ready things. I'm not gonna know what to do with myself when we're down to shorts and tee shirt weather. Scratch that, I know just what I'll do: rejoice in doing less frequent and smaller loads of laundry. Amen!

What also seems to happen without fail is that the midweek laundry necessity overlaps with the midweek dishwasher necessity. Because I'm crazy and paranoid, I refuse to run any more than one water-consuming thing (shower) at the same time as another (washing machine), toilets and sinks being the exclusions. So I will typically do laundry first and then run the dishwasher once the clothes are in the dryer.

What is my point? My point is that while both of these things, doing dishes and doing laundry, are two of my most loathsome chores (always have been, always will be), I say a prayer of thanks every time I use one of these appliances because they are my own. I do not have to wash every piece of servingware by hand. I do not have to share my washer or dryer with strangers. I pay a water bill instead of scrounging quarters for a communal machine.

So thank you, appliances, for all of your hard work! Just disregard my grumbling.