We’re getting a dishwasher, my dad’s Christmas gift to us, and I couldn’t be more excited.  For the past almost four years, Jim and I have been grumpily washing our dishes by hand, often procrastinating until there’s a large stack of dirty dishes on the counter.  On those hot and humid summer days (we don’t really use our air conditioner), washing dishes becomes just plain nasty.  And it can even be pretty unpleasant in the winter, when the woodstove is cranked up high.  But not much longer, because the dishwasher has been paid for and ordered, and Jim is busy reconfiguring the cabinets to make room for that lovely beast.

We gained new respect for another bit of automation recently, when our washing machine needed repairs and we were without it for three weeks (including the week that my sister was visiting us).  It’s not that laundromats are so bad, because there are actually some advantages of going to the laundromat, most notably that you can get your laundry done in one fell swoop.  But when your towels get smelly mid-week, and you can’t take the time to go to the laundromat, there’s nothing more lovely than being able to pop down to the basement and run a load.  When our machine was finally fixed last Friday, I was so inspired by its renewed presence in our lives that I actually tackled all those laundry odds and ends that accumulate in a stack by the washer:  the random red items that will stain everything else, and so get put to the side – the old curtains that we used as dropcloths during a project – the pesky woolen washables.  All clean now.

Automation rocks.