The literal machines in your house machine
And when they break down: a chaos story.
I know we’ve all had days like this:
Solo parenting
Two kids home sick
Several overdue projects you urgently need to address
One kid clogs the toilet
Then you realize your packed-full dishwasher didn’t run last night because it’s broken
Life is challenging enough when all our systems are up and running, but when one fails, you start to see how vital each piece of the house machine really is.
A dishwasher is just one small part of the house, but when you rely on it working, you don’t have the space for it to stop working. Now there are no dishes for breakfast because you don’t keep a ton of extra dishes. You don’t have time to wash the dishes by hand because two sick, cranky kids need to be fed NOW. And the pileup compounds throughout the day.
After a brief (or not so brief) moment of panic, I took some deep breaths, grabbed some quick snacks for the kids, emptied the dishwasher, washed everything and put it back into the dishwasher to dry. I talked myself down by realizing I could create a new system for the broken-dishwasher scenario, which cheered me up because I’m a middle-aged mom and this is the kind of thing that gets me excited.
I also reflected on my gratitude for all the hardworking appliances that help my house function. I get back so much time in the day thanks to my washer, dryer, microwave, stove, vacuum, and dishwasher.
Whenever I groan about doing laundry I try to envision pioneer women beating laundry against rocks at the river and give thanks that I have miraculous machines to do this work for me.
(If you want to go deeper: I came across this video of modern Iranian nomads doing laundry in the river, a whole-family affair I found fascinating.)
My takeaways from this chaos day:
Gratitude for modern conveniences and a reminder that the amount of labor needed to operate our machines is truly minimal
A sub-reminder not to fritter away all this saved time scrolling on my phone
When a piece of a system breaks, rather than bemoan the loss, focus on improvising a new system that takes the breakage into account
Now You
When you have an insanely busy day/week, what’s the one or two things you ensure you do to keep your home running smoothly? When have you had to confront a system breakdown?
Two more dishwasher-related posts
Why would one be enough?
The anticipation is the worst part: use a timer to check chores off your list
Read till the end for a new development here at Your House Machine…
Your kitchen is more like a car factory than you realize
The kitchen is the hardest working room in the house. Think about how much time you spend there, and what you ask it to do — store food, cook food, clean dishes, and be a gathering place for your household.
I live in Asheville and thanks to Helene, have a brand new, in my face, gratitude for clean, running water. When I think about how much water I use in a day and have to get the 5 gallon jugs, tote them to a distribution spot, stand in line, fill them up and tote them back to my car, suddenly I am intensely grateful that I did not grow up like my mother did, carrying water from the well as one of 15 children every day, multiple times a day.
How grateful I am that we had so much help to rebuild the road to our water treatment plants, muck them out, and get us back going again.
Thank you, Rebecca for reminding me that we can shift our focus and work with what we have.
My busy weeks just lead to a backlog that may never be done. I guess my failsafe system is trying to be okay with doing the most essential things and failing strategically on the rest. Also, practicing sincere gratitude for running water. I think about wells and hauling water in buckets nearly every time I run the tap. Our life is full of miracles like these. That helps. 🙂