We bought a dishwasher.
There was a dishwasher already in the house when we bought it, and it ran just fine (the inspector did a full cycle to be sure), but it was–can you guess?–not in great shape. Picture rusting out dish racks and black sludge in the bottom. When we tried actually washing dishes in it, surprise! They didn’t get clean. Probably on account of the sludge.
After several attempts to clean it out and make it useable, we finally decided it was a lost cause. We’ve been hand-washing dishes for the last two months.
Know this: I HATE WASHING DISHES. Know this as well: SO DOES DAVID. And since Mila’s not quite at an age where we can make her do chores (because why else to people have kids, if not to capitalize on the free slave labor?) we’ve been stuck doing the thing we most loathed.
Except we didn’t do it nearly often enough. Instead, we let the dishes pile up for days before one of us would break down and furiously scrub at the caked on food remnants whilst cursing the previous owners of the house for not having taken better care of such precious technology. It was only a matter of time before we caved.
But dishwashers are expensive. And it’s not like we haven’t bought a bunch of other expensive stuff lately. A refrigerator. A microwave. New flooring for the master bedroom. A living room rug. A HOUSE. These things add up quickly. Saving up for a full kitchen renovation is not happening nearly as quickly as I’d like. Truthishly, it’s not happening at all.
So we spent some time the other night talking about our long long list of house projects and deciding what our priorities need to be. Taking certain things into consideration–mostly the availability of funds and time–we’ve come up with a revised plan of attack. Projects that won’t cost much but will still have a big impact, like scraping off ugly wallpaper, are higher on the totem pole than pricier, more labor-intensive ones like, say, gutting the master bathroom.
Of course we plan to finish the projects we’ve already started, since we have the materials we need for some and just have to put some finishing touches on others. But the big stuff we haven’t begun yet will be put on the back burner till after the holidays.
Fortunately, this means these guys will be going away, and probably soon.
Unfortunately, it also means the shaggy blue carpet in the smaller two bedrooms will be sticking around for a while.
Future house guests, consider yourselves warned.
(Also I have made a couple major changes that I want to show you. I just need to straighten things up and take photos. So that’s coming soon. Yay!)
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