Confessions of a Slacker Wife

I have this thing about silverware; I hate washing it. I guess I have known this a long time, but our last apartment had a dishwasher and so the full measure of my loathing for this chore never fully came to light until we moved here to Sullivan. Our current apartment, while charming in many ways, lacks that most noble kitchen appliance: the dishwasher. I have become that appliance...and not a fully functioning one, I must say.

I knew we had reached a serious point when Brad couldn't find a spoon in the silverware drawer last night. No clean spoons. And almost no forks or knives either. The time had come. You know it's time to bite the bullet and wash the silverware when there are no clean utensils left. So I resolved to do something about it...soon. All the other dishes were cleaned up...but somehow, I can never manage to make myself do the silverware. There's something indescribably tedious about fishing around in soapy water, and coming up with a fistful of mishmashed silverware...whose business ends are facing all sorts of ways...and then you have to make them all face the same way before you can wash them...oh...it makes me weak with loathing just thinking about it. I know I'm a wimp. Well, not a total wimp because frying pans I will wash, dishes I will wash, pots and pans I will scrub ( although, I really don't like muffin tins), but silverware...? It gives me the hibbly jibblies.

Yes, I am ashamed. I am fully aware that many of you are probably shaking your heads, crinkling up your noses, and thinking disparaging thoughts about what a disgusting housekeeper I am. I'm sorry. I really feel bad about it. But, reader, look deep into your heart and I think you will have to confess to someTHING that constitutes YOUR housekeeping nemesis. Maybe it's the dustbunnies under your bed...maybe it's the grime that collects in the small space between the back of the bathroom sink and the wall, maybe it's vacuuming under furniture...We have all fallen short of the perfectly clean house at some point.

I saw a book today in Toadstool Bookstore. The title was Confessions of a Slacker Wife. I chuckled. I thought of my kitchen sink, whose bottom could scarcely be seen for the mass of unwashed silverware which clogged its depths. I came home and looked into the kitchen sink. It reminded me of the dry bones in Ezekiel. So I washed the silverware. At least, most of it.