Fully Appreciated

I have never fully appreciated my dishwasher before.  In fact, I think I've made a habit of under-valuing this modern, first-world appliance.

When I was single, I lived for a few years without a dishwasher, which was no big deal, and I adopted a philosophy at that time, that I would rather do without a dishwasher than laundry appliances.  In fairness to me, I adopted this philosophy in my mid-twenties and I really did mean it at the time, which meant, I foolishly thought this remained my philosophy for the past few years.  No dishwasher?  No biggie -- as long as I have laundry appliances.

This week I learned that I have been under-valuing the wonderful contraption known as a dishwasher.

The amount of dishes we generate as a family is so much more than I realized until I have had to do without a dishwasher for the past two weeks.  We moved in and didn't realize our dishwasher wasn't working until we had been here a few days... and then, I ran the (full) broken dishwasher four separate times thinking that the problem was me... I just didn't know how to work the thing before Hubby and I finally realized it was broken.

After washing dishes by hand (and switching to paper plates) for the past ten days, we finally had a working dishwasher last night, and I couldn't BELIEVE how MANY dishes fit into the dish washer -- after I have been washing sink-full after sink-full since we moved in.

Oh, Sweet Dishwasher, I have not appreciated you.

I still love my laundry appliances, and definitely appreciate not having to go to a laundromat... but, Oh, Sweet Dishwasher, I apologize for my apathy up until this point.