Your House Machine

Your House Machine

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Your House Machine
Your House Machine
The literal machines in your house machine
Thinking in Systems

The literal machines in your house machine

And when they break down: a chaos story.

Rebecca | Your House Machine's avatar
Rebecca | Your House Machine
May 09, 2025
∙ Paid
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Your House Machine
Your House Machine
The literal machines in your house machine
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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

black frying pan on stove
Annie Spratt via Unsplash

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 r…

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