What happens to your dishwasher after kids

Dear dishwasher,

We’ve been through a lot.

Turns out, it’s not just my life that’s changed since having kids.

You’ve also been jolted into a rude and crude existence that is punctuated only by wear and tear, and tough love.

Both of our lives, dishwasher, were a freaking country club before kids came along.

Me: enjoying adult conversation, wearing high heels and going to bed after 9pm.

And you: running an easy, breezy once-a-week cycle with all that nice adult china and glassware. There was a day when you saw real wine glasses and actual glass water cups.

Now, as you know, we drink our wine out of Solo cups.

But we still send plenty o’ plastic your way.

(Oh yeah.)

Sippy cups, bottle nipples, bottles, plastic bowls, kid straws.

All sorts of tiny, tacky-colored, bright-and-obnoxious wares, with which we feed our tiny and sometimes-obnoxious little people.

With the first kid, your life, like mine, didn’t change much.

I could still go out to lunch and lose baby weight and drive a normal car.

And, you still saw mostly adult dishes. You never had to wash a bottle nipple or my breast pump accessories, because I lived in fear that you’d break or warp them. I had to sterilize all of that myself in the kitchen sink, of course.

Now, you get everything. Warped who? I’m just glad they’ve been cleaned. And sterilization is relative. Because the croupy toddler just forced his paci into the newborn’s mouth. Pass the wipes, please.

Now, there is no job I won’t give you.

Plastic lunch containers that will get warped and cloudy? Sure.

The toddler’s toothbrush, after it was inserted, repeatedly, into the toilet? Duh.

Baby toys, the cleaning brush, sandals, dirty socks, that cookie cutter that was lost for 3 weeks in the sandbox? Yes, throw it all in.

The Vitamix pitcher? Absolutely. Who has time to clean that by hand?

Every single kid plate, utensil and cup that I can force in there, or that won’t physically break into 2 when you wash it? Abso-freakin’-lutely. They’ll all be ruined or lost soon anyway. (Especially all those sippy cup lids. Where the frick do they all go?!?)

And so, dishwasher, thank you. Thank you for your years of loyal, unending, tireless service to our family’s incessant array of eating utensils and vessels. Their eating habits and demands seem to blur together into one, continuous servitude that has now become your life.

Trust me, I know.

But, it just feels great to know I’m not the only one working a helluva lot harder than I used to.

Sincerely,

The woman of the house