Silver Helper

My life just got significantly better. I'm a big fan of cool gadgets and nifty electronics but this particular object is something that everyone would appreciate. We got a brand new shiny silver dishwasher!

Actually we got it a few days ago and we had already tested it, but it wasn't really part of our lives yet. It just sat there and looked pretty while I hand-washed dishes out of habit. Now we had a few guests over and we created such a pile of dirty dishes that we had hardly any clean dishes left. Suddenly the dishwasher was my new best friend.

Dishwashers aren't all that expensive. They're not cheap either but a dishwasher buys half an hour to one hour of free time each day. If I were to hire someone to wash my dishes it would cost much more in the long run... Actually that's all just empty reasoning. The truth of the matter is this - washing the dishes sucks. It's boring, mind numbing and just plain wastes your life. All that time every day that I stood there and washed dishes... Oh my god, I don't even dare to calculate how much of my life I've spent on such an activity. Eventually I was very good at it: I washed dishes fast and thoroughly without using any detergent on everyday dishes. It took a lot of very warm water but I preferred wasting water to using too much chemicals. And no matter how good I was at it, the problem just kept coming back.

Over time, I have learned that I am horrible at maintenance but I'm good at thorough improvements. I once spent 4 hours washing one really old and dirty radiator and I actually enjoyed it because I could really see the difference. The radiator started out looking like it needs to be replaced but when I finished it looked freshly painted. I took something old and turned it into something new and it took just 4 hours. Maintenance is never that rewarding. It's just plain old work. Things can never improve with maintenance. Actually it's a horrible concept: household is getting worse and all I can do is to help reduce the inevitable. I can wash a few dishes, I can dust, I can even mop the floors but this won't help anything and soon everything will be just as bad again. It's a race I can't win. In a way, cleaning is rewarding because I get to turn an unclean apartment into a clean apartment but every time I clean I get this frustrated sense of deja vu, "Haven't I done this already?". It doesn't matter how good I become at maintenance tasks (cleaning, dishes, laundry, etc) because I'm still going to have to do them again and again and again...

This is where the dishwasher steps in - it breaks the cycle. At one moment I have an ever-growing pile of dishes and the next moment I get all dishes done in just minutes. Too bad dishwashers don't also mop floors. Oh wait, I think there's people who do that.

The point is, all people spend their energy on something. Some people have more energy than other but they all end up spending their energy on only a few select things. About a month ago I realized I was in trouble. I aspired to be active in school but I was spending all my energy on baby and all the leftover energy on being a housewife. At the end of the day baby was happy and house was clean but I felt tired and spent. I didn't have any more energy for either school or the laboratory. All my goals and wishes were lost somewhere and I felt like I had fallen into the housewife role that I had really wanted to avoid. I felt like my career was slipping away from me and my PhD was in jeopardy. I discussed it with Erkki. I declared in a matter-of-fact way that too many household chores have become my area of expertise. We are going to have to redistribute household chores to make them more equal.

Men and women are different and Erkki does have a job as well, but both of us had a child and it simply happened that my everyday life was affected more than his. It still does not mean that I have to do the laundry and nearly all the cleaning from now on just because I'm a woman. Hey , this is not a Cinderella story - I really didn't mind doing those chores because, simply, I'm better at them than Erkki. But I don't love those chores so much that I'm willing to give up my (non-existent) career just to do the dishes and the laundry a bit better than Erkki. I proposed to Erkki that perhaps he could take a couple of tasks off my hands, like perhaps washing the floors because that's just the most horrible task ever but it simply needs to be done. No reason why I should be the one who does it. Erkki listened to my analysis of household chores, thought about it for a moment and then told me, "I think we should hire a maid to come in every once in a while. And we need more babysitter time. And a dishwasher will also come in handy."

So there you have it. My husband would rather get a dishwasher and pay someone to do the dirty work than mop the floors himself. I understand him perfectly well and I agree with any plan that involves someone other than me washing the floors and us getting a dishwasher.