The Dirty Spoon

For approximately four years myself, my husband, and our three children lived in a house without a dishwasher. Four years. Without. A. Dishwasher. Not to mention our kitchen was tiny.

Then we had a baby.

So, myself, my husband, and our four children were now living in an 800 sq. ft. home with no dishwasher. Needless to say dinner time could be contentious. No one wanted to do the dishes, and if we left them for even one day it seemed there were mountains of sloppy cups, bowls, and silverware piled on our tiny, tiled counter tops.

This continued pretty much until the day we moved out of that house and into a new home, with yes, you guessed it, a beautiful, brand-new dishwasher. Long gone were the days when our two oldest children (then, eight and six) would spend two hours washing and drying all of the dishes (with some parental help mind you). A bright new future was ahead of us, and I don't think anyone was happier than I was. Over the past two years we have been happily using our new dishwasher, sometimes doing two loads a day. Now, as a family of six, it seems staying ahead of doing the dishes is a constant battle. But at least there aren't usually unsightly piles of gloppy plates and cups lying around for too long these days.

Then, one day a few weeks ago, I noticed there was a spoon that wasn't getting clean. So, I did what most people would do, I put it back in the dishwasher for another spin through the wash. Again, the spoon did not come out clean. At that point I considered washing the spoon by hand. But why should I do that when I had a perfectly good dishwasher to do the job for me? In it went again. And, again, it did not come out clean. No matter how many or how few dishes there were in with the spoon, that thing would not get clean. At this point I again considered cleaning the spoon by hand. Yet again, though, I washed it. Determined that a little, smarmy, oatmeal coated spoon was not going to get the best of me. Again, the spoon did not come out clean.

When we are faced with challenges in life, we have a couple of choices. One, face the problem head-on and do what needs to be done to take care of it. Second, we can push our problems away, hoping that, somehow, they will disappear on their own. The spoon, while not a complicated problem to solve, presented to me a frustration that I felt I shouldn't have to deal with. "Let the dishwasher wash it, that's what we bought it for!" Was my mantra. And while not without some merit, my stance had, admittedly, some problems. The first is that, while yes, the dishwasher's job was to, in fact, wash dishes, I could plainly see that this was not happening. How much effort would it have taken to just put some soap on the spoon, take a sponge to it and clean it off? Not much, really. But I am a stubborn person, and though I knew I could just as easily wash the offending spoon, I didn't want to take responsibility for it. Washing it was the dishwasher's job after all. After putting that poor spoon through probably 6-8 more washings, I finally decided to wash the spoon myself. After all that time, I was finally willing to handle my problem myself. And you know what? It took about a minute to get the soap, put it on the spoon, and to clean it with a sponge, back to it's initial, clean appearance. Something I could have done weeks before, but had been too rebellious to admit.

Sometimes, life is more complicated than a dirty spoon. Sometimes, situations arise beyond our control and make us want to tear our hair out and scream at the top of our lungs, "WHY?!" And that's okay. But the longer we put the spoon back in the dishwasher, and expect it to take care of our problems for us, the less time we have to enjoy life and realize we are stronger than we ever thought we were.