We Need to Clean Up Our Act

Our dishwasher has been out of commission for a week. So, we've gone back to the good old-fashioned method~washing dishes by hand.

I hadn't really realized how dependent we were on the modern miracle of KitchenAid until the dishes started stacking up in the sink. And getting on my last nerve.

Yes, the family knows how to do dishes by hand. We frequently employ the sink, the faucet and the good ol' drying rack after special occasions, when we have too many dishes to load. But with four people coming and going at all hours of the day and night this summer, and no one specifically assigned to "dish duty," things have become a tad chaotic.

I'll wash the breakfast dishes. Then College Girl might come through with a coffee cup and put it in the sink. And when the stack becomes less-than-manageable, The Wild One and Moker start leaving dishes all over the place.

Yes, I'm going a littel nuts here. And I'm really afraid that our friends the ants might come back for a visit before we get the dishwasher problem resolved.

I'm the first to admit that my kids are lazy. But when I drafted the girls to help with the dishes last night after dinner, it was as if I were speaking Russian to them, and asking them to paint a stack of nesting dolls.

My Mom always had the kids form an assembly line: one for washing, one for drying, one for putting away. And after a little bit of "who's on first, what's on second?" last night, we were humming like the well-oiled machine I remember from my childhood.

Until Moker came through and put his ice cream bowl in the sink. Without even rinsing it out.

Men.