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Packing the Dishwasher
By admin | April 13, 2009
Welcome to the age of obsession. Everywhere you turn, it seems people are obsessed with something.
Cell phones. Gadgets. Clothes. Food. Computers. Costco.
(Okay, that last one is a personal downfall.)
Take cars, for example. There is this guy in our neighborhood who can only be described as an unrepentant “car junkie.” This guy’s car gleams. It is truly radiant. On sunny days his gold luxo-mobile reflects the sun’s rays like one of those mirrors they use to gather solar power out in the Mohave desert. Reports are that neighborhood children have been blinded by an errant glint off the high polish finish.
I, on the other hand, qualify more in the category of " car tolerant."
I rarely wash the cars, even more rarely vacuum them, and only occasionally give a passing nod to the accumulation of door dings. Don't get me wrong. I want the cars to last, really I do. It's just that I also try to do my best to save water and the environment. (That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.)
The right-rear hubcap is scraped from one too many close calls with the curb and there is a piece of loose cowling around the radio that insists on popping loose a mere 30 seconds after you push it back into place. I’ve long since given up the battle to stuff it back into place and keep it there.
Only when the kids got old enough to actually understand the admonition, “NO chocolate milk in the back seat!” did I finally break down and get my wife the relative Lexus of mini-vans, the Toyota Sienna. Cloth seats. Lots of cup holders. AM/FM stereo with a CD changer, automatic transmission, and (of course) cruise control.
It's no sweat off my brow if there's a ding or a spill here and there. I buy my vehicles pre-dinged now just to get the over the disappointment of that first ding in a hurry.
Home obsession is one of the worst kinds of addiction. Ever walk into the local museum of art? Nice and comfy, dontchathink? Look but DO NOT touch. That's how some people treat their homes. Stop by for a visit but never forget that there's a 250lb security guard ready to cart you off if you fondle the sculptured carpet.
I walked into the home of a friend not long ago and immediately caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a slip-covered child hovering out of sight in the shadows. This home-girl also has the most modern kitchen this side of Hollywood. The island is not just for sitting and chatting, it’s the imaginary set for the wannabe Emeril in the house, her husband, to entertain their upscale foodie friends. The carpets throughout the first floor are an premium grade that, while intended to last 20 years, will likely be replaced on the usual once-every-5-years cycle. Paint? Professionally applied. The bi-weekly maid service also insures that dust never gets a chance to adhere to any of the high-gloss polished surfaces.
Oh, and don’t forget to take off your shoes when you come in. Rugs are for digging toes into, not rubber soles.
Our family, on the other hand, actually lives in our house, thank you very much. Our youngest son, an 11-year-old whirling dervish, is in non-stop motion, wearing grooves into the carpeting and floorboards. The couches are slept on, cuddled on, and show appropriate wear. The 11-year-old faux-wood electronic piano has a few scratches on the finish about which we stopped worrying a long, long time ago. The paint throughout the house is 100% my wife’s creation. She’s actually getting quite good at it, although I am surprised less and less by the presence of a new shade as I come home from work at the end of the day.
(Her penchant for painting, by the way, runs on her side of the family. My side of the tree was all about the wallpaper, of which we mercifully have none in our house.)
In the basement our kids PLAY and play HARD. (As I write this I hear the howls and giggles of the 16, 14, and 11-year-olds playing video games downstairs.) Also in the basement is a spot where the carpet has worn bare where the seams butt together. Did I mention the bedroom floorboards squeak a bit?
Unlike normal, expected obsessions with home or car, my personal fixation is much more covert.
It is at this juncture that I must offer a confession.
I…
…am obsessed…
…with our dishwasher.
Some people love their dishwasher for the manual labor it saves them. It's a time-saver. It saves slaving over running water with chapped hands.
Then there are people like me. My dishwasher and I share a special bond. It’s not just a magic box where the dishes go in filthy and miraculously come out spot free. NO, my dishwasher is the only place in my life subject to anything remotely akin to the notion of feng shui. My dishwasher is a place of assuring predictability, endowed innately with a normality of form and function unlike any other home appliance or piece of furniture.
I refuse to dump the dishes in the dishwasher in just any willy-nilly fashion. No, for me the dishwasher is a bonsai garden in which the precise placement of every dish, utensil, and drinking vessel results in much more than just a healthier, less germ-free home. Dishwasher packing is a thing of efficient, artful beauty.
Our dishwasher, a bargain basement Maytag I installed myself, includes a wide variety of tines, racks, and placement options. At first, I was overwhelmed with all the placement options. Where to place the Corelle tea cups? And what of this oversized serving platter? Oh no! This Palaks drinking glass is too big to fit there!
Then it suddenly dawned on me. As I stood back and surveyed both levels with an eye for the "big" picture, a distinct form and symmetry emerged. It was as if I had gazed upon one of those 3-D color stereographs where after staring at it long enough the hidden picture comes to life.
The Corelle dishes fit perfectly on either side on the bottom. That was the starting point of the placement pattern. Ah HAH! Now I see it!
Up top, to the right, go the slim tea-cups, tucked beneath a drop-down rack that holds the broader cups properly so they forcefully catch the streams of water from both the top and mid-level jets. Over there… near the front on the second level… Why that’s precisely where the saucers are supposed to go!
It was as if Maytag had secretly placed electrodes on my head in the middle of the night and recorded my every dishwashing fantasy, turning them into a true-to-life replica of no-manual-effort-required dish-purification heaven.
At first I obsessed over the dishwasher. Isn’t that how all addictions begin? I would secretly reorganize the dishwasher when my wife wasn’t looking. “How come she can’t see that the cups go up here,” I would grumble to nobody in particular. Over time I gradually assumed the semi-official role of dishwasher-packer-in-Chief, bumping everyone out of the way to insure that the innards of the washer were appropriately arranged for maximum grime-stripping efficiency.
Eventually I achieved true dishwasher Tsar-dom. Oh sure, I “claimed” I was merely doing my servant-leader duty by spending the 10 or 15 minutes before the kids left for school packing and arranging the dishwasher. The truth was more sinister.
I was not going to let anyone disrupt the uber-order of my Jet-Dried utopia!
I knew the obsession had crossed the line the day I nudged my wife out of the way as she was packing the dishwasher in her usual, adorably disheveled fashion. I had ascended the dishwasher packing rungs of success from the Craftsman Truck circuit all the way to NASCAR. It was a classic Jeff Gordon move played out on linoleum instead of asphalt. I nudged her out of the way as she took the corner, placing a tea cup where the saucers should have gone. I slipped in and said, “Here, honey, let me help with that. It’s what I do well.”
I had regained control of the track!
Then it happened. It finally dawned on me that my wife had taken control over my domain! Walking into the kitchen in a half-groggy stupor after a tossing-turning night’s sleep I saw the glowing red light of the “Drying” indicator on the face of the dishwasher. At first a wave of nausea overtook me as I contemplated the vision of a soup bowl dangling lazily over the top of a coffee cup. Then came fear.
“Is this the equivalent of a dishwasher coup? Am I losing control over MY world?”
At first I approached the dishwasher in fear, not knowing what desecration of the holy of orderly holies lay before me.
As I opened the door a crack I paused and drew in a heady breath of steam as it rose from the opening. “Ahhh… The lingering smell of lemony fresh cleanliness.” I closed my eyes and let the aroma surround me. “She must have used the old box of the Kirkland detergent,” I thought. I could sense the delicate after-sent of the ocean blue Jet Dry anti-streaking agent.
“Do I dare open my eyes?” I fretted.
“Suck it up, Steve! Be a man! You can take it!”, I tried to reassure the control-freak in my head.
I opened one eye first, peeking into the darkness through the narrow slit, anticipating a mishegoss blend of plates, cups, saucers, and teflon-coated pans all strewn throughout our home-based autoclave.
What I encountered was something new and unusually effective! Somehow, miraculously, I found myself equipped to see through the randomness and recognized that the work of the dishwasher had indeed been accomplished, albeit without my signature placement panache. Some dishes found a way into their “proper” place, but many had not. And yet…
There was cleanliness! The dishwasher had surmounted less-than-artful loading and achieved sparkling purity.
At one and the same time I felt both free and obsolete. My long-standing reputation as the king dishwasher packer was now in doubt. Why, if the dishes got washed even without the precision placement of the man with the micrometer eyeballs, what was the purpose in continuing with life? What was left for me to achieve?
You think I jest? Trust me, I know what I am good at in life. Dishwasher packing is one of those things. This is a big deal! I mean, if I am forced to come to grips with the fact that there is – (dare I admit it) – another acceptable way to pack the dishes and still get them clean…
What is there left for me to micro-manage?
As I stood there above the dishwasher basking in the moist heat of a not-so-perfectly-packed but no-less-perfectly-cleaned load of dishes I flashed back over decades of other dishwasher-esque obsessions. How many other times had I made my wife, my kids, my extended family, or even my co-workers insane out of an attempt to achieve perfection in even the smallest, most insignificant of endeavors? How many times had I shoved aside someone already doing a decent job just to impose my own quest for uniformity and perfection?
As strange as it may sound, my dishwasher epiphany brought me back to deep reflection over the many times and ways in which I insisted on having everything just “so” in the quest to achieve the Holy Grail of dinnerware efficiency and symmetry.
What I have always known, but my revelatory trip into the bowls of the dishwasher rekindled, was that obsession with perfection is not always equal to obsession with excellence. To be sure, there are those times when a healthy obsession with detail is critical. Launching the Space Shuttle comes to mind. Policing Wall Street also might have been a good time to get obsessive.
But sometimes – most times, I think – “good enough” probably is “good enough." Sometimes letting someone else pack the dishwasher their own way, even if it's not the most perfect way, will still get the dishes sparkling clean.
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