In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo talks about the beauty of getting rid of things that don’t spark joy. In her book she says, “Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.”
As someone who loves a great house purge, I have read and followed Kondo’s methods since her book was released in 2014. I’ve purged and scaled back, especially recently after feeling suffocated by the over abundance of things in our small home.
Despite all of my efforts to purge, declutter, and reorganize, there is one room in my home that has caused me a lot of stress and anxiety in recent years. It doesn’t matter how hard I work or how many hours I spend, I have never been able to get a good handle on my kitchen. I have a very small kitchen, with limited cupboard space, and a lot of people to feed. Despite keeping a fairly small amount of kitchen stuff, and almost no big gadgets, I never seem to have a tidy kitchen.
When we rented our home nearly three years ago I didn’t notice a major kitchen appliance not included in our home. After moving into our house I began putting my dishes away, and found myself looking around for the dishwasher. I felt my jaw nearly hit the floor, when I realized the mistake I had made. I didn’t have a dishwasher, and somehow I had failed to notice this before signing the lease.
For nearly three years I’ve hand washed all of our dishes, a role I eventually became used to. In the last year it’s felt like an overwhelming task, my kitchen always full of dirty dishes, or drying clean dishes. It never looks tidy, no matter how many hours I spend washing, my hands dry and chapped. I’ve fantasized about having a dishwasher, missing the ease of dropping dishes into a machine, instead of standing at the sink for multiple hours every day.
Finally, I said enough. I didn’t care how, I needed to find a way to put a dishwasher in our kitchen. Since our landlord was unable to install one we decided to purchase a portable dishwasher. A quick look at the expensive options available at Home Depot sent me straight to second hand websites. It didn’t take long before I’d found a beautiful and nearly new $900 Whirlpool dishwasher for only $150.
On Valentine’s Day my husband asked what we would be doing, and I replied, “Picking up our new dishwasher!” It ended up being a bit more complicated than expected. The dishwasher was full size, which required some maneuvering of our kitchen table, and we also had to replace our faucet for one that connected correctly (my husband went to Home Depot four times in one day trying to find different ways to connect it!) After a couple of days, everything was set up correctly, and I loaded my first sink full of dishes into my dishwasher. Then I sat on my couch and read while the washer ran.
The next morning I unloaded the dishwasher, and felt tears splash down my cheeks. It was emotional and overwhelming, taking out sparkling clean dishes and putting them away. I pushed the dishwasher back in place, stood back, and looked at my immaculate and clean kitchen. All it took was a few moments. This past week I have marvelled at time and energy saved, and the beauty of a kitchen that is near-constantly clean. It’s no wonder that a woman named Josephine Cochrane invented the dishwasher, and I thank her for her brilliant invention.
Forget the life-changing magic of tidying up, I found my life change when I bought a dishwasher.
