The kitchen is the hub of our house because that’s where the food is, pure and simple. I’m usually there because I’m either making food, cleaning up after making food, putting food away because I just went to the store to buy food, or eating food. And where I am, especially when handling food, the animals follow. The rabbit and bird already live in the kitchen, but the dogs lay at my feet whether I’m cooking or eating, hoping I pass them a morsel. The cat likes to see what the dogs are up to and sits on the table pretending not to notice them. The kids come in when they’re hungry or when they need something from me. Even when I’m not there they sit at the table doing homework. When I come in to make dinner and start banging pots around, they might leave for quiet of the dining room, but often I have to kick them out to set the table. I get it. It’s comforting in the kitchen. It’s warm, it smells good when food is cooking, animals congregate, you can hear what’s going on in the rest of the house, you can look out the window at the garden for inspiration, and most importantly, the fridge is only a few steps away.
But since I consider the kitchen my domain ultimately, that I let the rest of the family share, I like it to be clean. Visually the kitchen gives me pleasure, restores my equilibrium when I walk in. However when it’s a mess it can have the reverse effect. Suddenly I’m strung out, yelling at the kids for leaving food out on the counters, dirty dishes in the sink because somehow they magically fly from the sink to the dishwasher, or because the dishwasher was full of clean dishes and unloading it would be unthinkable unless specifically instructed in writing and then reminded verbally one hundred times. And their stuff tends to spread like a virus through the kitchen: laptops, books, papers, clothes, shoes, even equipment like racquets or dirty horse paraphernalia. If anybody was allergic to any kind of animal and they came into our kitchen, they would start gagging immediately with all the pet hair, hay, and feathers floating around.
The thing that really bugs me though is having to go through the garbage and take out things that could have been recycled. One daughter is too lazy to rinse out the containers and so throws them in the trash. The other one knows to recycle, but tends to skip the rinsing. That’s a problem with dog food cans because then the kitchen smells for hours. My oldest is quite environmentally aware now and feels strongly about recycling, but he tends to put things in that actually can’t be recycled, like the little caps from water bottles or used napkins that should go in the compost instead. One time he went through a brown paper bag I had thrown in the garbage from somebody’s lunch out. I didn’t know whether to be irritated or proud of his social conscience, but immaturity won out. I am usually so meticulous about recycling and composting that I didn’t like to be caught out. Later that day I saw a plastic food container that he had thrown out and I thought I had busted him. “You threw away a big plastic container after going through MY garbage?” I asked him incredulously. “Look at the back of it Mom,” he said with an annoyingly calm authority, “we don’t recycle number six in Seattle.”
I was so infuriated at being bested by my teenage son that I childishly brought up his dishwashing technique. “I’m the best dishwasher in the family!” he said defensively. “Yes, but you use so much hot water and soap that you are contributing to the ocean’s rising temperature,” I countered smugly. I realized I was being petty because he does do the best job on the dishes. They are as clean as when I do them. He’s even better than his father, who never washes the bottom of pans and he often leaves the meat pan to soak overnight so I have to look at congealed grease when I come down in the morning. It completely spoils my coffee making ritual. Middle daughter does the same thing as her father. She puts plates in the dishwasher with food stuck all over them, and barely rinses the pots so they are slippery with oil when I go to put them away. Youngest daughter is a bit better, rinsing them more thoroughly, but she only uses cold water and I will never believe cold water gets dishes clean.
Then I heard in yoga class about the rinse/hold button on the dishwasher that might just solve all the dishwashing issues in our house. I was raised in the generation of dishwashers that were really only used for drying, you had to clean the dishes so well before you put them in. So now when I see people load dishes into the dishwasher that have food crusted on them, it pains me. But apparently dishwashers these days are made to clean crusted on food. In fact, my friend in yoga told me, it’s not good to put clean dishes in the dishwasher because the dishwasher needs something to clean and if there is nothing on the dishes it will start to eat away at the inside of the dishwasher and might cause a leak. “But that’s so gross!” I whined. “And what if it’s not full and I don’t need to run it right away?” I asked. “That’s why you use the rinse/hold button,” she said patiently. “And it only uses about a gallon of water which is a lot less than pre-rinsing all the dishes.” I still haven’t tried it yet, as I’m not sure I could physically make myself load dirty dishes, but hopefully my kids are reading this because they tend to embrace new technology that I find culturally too disturbing. First we have to get through the argument about whose turn it is to do the dishes.
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