THE GREAT DISHWASHING WAR

I live in a house that was built in 1946 and it doesn’t have a dishwasher. The real estate agent who sold me the house called the kitchen “vintage” which translates into “no one ever bothered to update the damn thing.” Myself included. But to be fair, in the beginning, it was only Jen and me and I never thought we’d still be in this house 8 years later, let alone having a sink full of sippy cups and Hello Kitty spoons. But to be honest, doing the dishes doesn’t bother me one bit. In fact, I love doing the dishes. I find it cathartic after a long day with the girls. I literally wash away the stresses of the day.

Unfortunately Jen loves doing the dishes too. After a long day at the office and an immediate hour-plus watching the kids while I cook dinner, she’s champing at the bit for a little Palmolive therapy as well. As a matter of fact, we both enjoy doing the dishes so much we spend $13 a month to have Sirius/XM Radio in the kitchen. Not in the living room, not in our cars, just the kitchen.

The funny thing is we’ve never actually spoken about our mutual desire for washing the dishes because that would be admitting, to some degree, that we’d rather scrub some porcelain instead of spending quality time with our kids. So instead we both make “magnanimous” offers to do the dishes, “No, you go watch the kids while I clean up this huge mess,” or “You had a long day, why don’t you chill out with the girls while I take care of everything in here.” Yeah, like it’s possible to just “chill” with a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. However, the unspoken rules of our silent dishwashing war dictate that once one of us makes an offer to do the dishes, that person gets to do the dishes. It’s kind of like calling “shotgun” when you’re about to hop in a car with a group of people.

I don’t know if there will ever be a resolution to our situation. Though we’ve occasionally talked about remodeling the kitchen so we can install one of those new super stealth dishwashers. But then we just laugh, to ourselves of course, because then who would do the dishes?