Dishwasher

Let me just start by saying I am so thankful for our dishwasher. Every time I put a dish in there, I say a little prayer of thanks, that I have this work-saving device. I'm thankful for our washing machine and dryer, our air conditioner and furnace. Running water. All that stuff.

When we first moved to West Virginia, we didn't have a dishwasher, and that was definitely not a deal-breaker in our minds. After all, there were only two of us then, and one of us didn't even have a job--I could have washed dishes all day, and I would have been happy to, although I'm sure my hands would have protested after a while.

Then, we had a baby. And suddenly, I didn't have all day to do dishes anymore. In fact, I didn't have 5 minutes to do dishes. In fact, I didn't even have to time make any dishes dirty in the first place. I distinctly remember being awake at 2 a.m., feeding Cody, and Scott would be washing dishes or mopping the floor. Eventually, Cody didn't need as much hands on care, and I was back to having time to wash dishes, but we promised ourselves that if we ever had another baby, we would get a dishwasher first.

Fast forward to November of 2002. I was pregnant with Logan, AND we had guests coming for Thanksgiving. Enter the dishwasher. I remember looking at the energy usage label, and chuckling to myself, because they based the energy usage figures on 5 loads of dishes per week. I thought, who does five loads of dishes a week? That just seemed excessive. At the time of installation, we did one load of dishes about every 4-5 days.

Fast forward to November of 2008. Now we have three kids, and a different home with a different dishwasher. And guess what? I'm one of those people who is running her dishwasher 5 times a week. I still find it hard to believe that anyone would have to run their dishwasher 5 times a week. For a good three months now I've been telling myself that it must be only temporary, all these dirty dishes. I don't know where all the dishes come from (well, I'm pretty sure they come from our cupboards)... So, yes, I am very, very thankful for our dishwasher!