Mysteries of the kitchen
Many people - especially married people, I think - know about the mysteries of the clothes washing machine. I mean, clothes - especially socks - that disappear in the wash. I have noticed a mystery about the dish washing machine in our kitchen. It is not related to the mystery of the clothes washing machine in the sense that anything is getting lost. No, nothing is getting lost. But it is related to the washing machine in that it is another mystery related to a washing appliance in the home.
I do not mean the fact that even after buying the machine - against my wishes - for the purpose of convenience, and that I am still the one (as before) who ended up doing the dishes - only faster. And, I am not talking about my previous observation that I seem to have an inordinate number of spoons in my silverware drawer. I am referring to dishes we posses that have no place in the kitchen cupboards.
I do not mean that the kitchen or the apartment is so small, crowded or cluttered that we do no have space for them. We certainly do have space. But the dishes have no place, no assigned spot, which is a different matter. So what we - I - do is to just leave these dishes in the machine. They get washed over and over again with each new load of dirty dishes and pots. I suppose by now they are not just fantastically clean, but positively antiseptic, too.
I have to trust my wife on this matter. I don’t know their place, and if I take them out of the machine and put them somewhere by my own volition I risk being yelled at and called an idiot for putting them in the wrong spot. So I just leave them where they are, being washed repeatedly. And, because my wife is not the sort of person who bothers washing and putting away dishes herself, the task usually fall to me. It takes her literally weeks to get around to putting them away by herself, and when she does, she doesn’t share the secret with me. Maybe she doesn’t put them away. Maybe she takes them directly from the machine for some use, after which they are back in the machine for a few more weeks. When they reappear as dirty dishes I repeat the cycle of washing and re-washing them rather than risk marital strife. It’s easier that way.