I sometimes feel sorry for myself…what I wouldn’t give for a maid to clean up some of junk or even to just wash the kitchen floor! Really, I have so much that I feel ashamed of myself afterwards. To help me remember how much I really have I look around my kitchen at my household “servants.”
I have a working washer and dryer that are not in the least fancy, but they clean my clothes whenever I put them in and push a couple of buttons. I have a working dishwasher that in a couple of hours produces shiny clean dishes. I have a blender I can tell to puree foods and it does it with a touch of a button. I have a refrigerator and freezer who consistently keep my produce, milk, and condiments cool and preserved for me with absolutely no effort from me. I have a stove/oven that cooks to my specifications whenever I require it to. I have a toaster oven that will toast, heat up food, and bake things when I don’t want to use the larger oven.
Last year, I experienced what a loss it is when some of your household servants decide they are going to quit and nothing will change their mind.
First, my dishwasher decided that it would continue to turn on, but it would no longer clean the dishes. I warned it that this was not acceptable, but declined to change its tune. A trip to Lowes and a day later we had replaced the silly thing.
Then one day I noticed an odd clicking sound in my kitchen. I asked my husband to check it out and he failed to come up with answers. Finally, that evening I discovered that the sound had been coming from the fridge! It had just decided to stop working…slowly. Another trip to Lowes and it was replaced. Or at least I thought it was. A few days into our new fridge’s reign of terror we noticed that the fridge and freezer would not always close when we demanded. Another trip to Lowes and we acquired a fridge that acts normally.
Then the day before Thanksgiving the real blow fell. Our microwave died. It continued to turn on, but it would refuse to heat up anything at all. We could have just gone to Lowes again, but our household savings fund was rather low after a dishwasher and a fridge in the same year and so we decided to wait. After almost 4 months I can’t say that I don’t miss it. It’s hard to warm up freezer cooking or leftovers when you don’t have a microwave. You definitely have to be on top of things in getting out stuff to defrost! However, we are surviving and the longer I go without it the less I miss it. We might buy one eventually, but for now we’re being frugal and washing a lot of pots that we use to warm up our leftovers for lunch!
Photo courtesy of 1950’s Unlimited via flickr.com