Wendyl Nissen: Dishing the dirt

If you want a clean dish at our house, don't go near the dishwasher. It hasn't worked since last October, yet it still sits there with a pathetic note stuck to its door: "Not Working - Sorry".

The plan is to remove it at some stage, but meanwhile we wash dishes the old way. With a tea towel, hot water, detergent and a Goldilocks.

"Okay, so you'll never believe what they've done now," whined our 12-year-old down the phone to one of her elder siblings. "No dishwasher. Have to wash dishes by hand. You're so lucky you lived here when you did."

She made the call four times, to all four half-brothers and sisters.

One can only imagine what they were thinking, but I'm fairly sure it wasn't casting their mind back to idyllic blended-family kitchen scenes where they all worked together in gleeful unison to unstack and stack the dishwasher under the watchful eye of one parent and one step-parent.

Perhaps they were instead thinking: "At least you get to live in one house with both your real parents".

The decision to lose the dishwasher was made for two reasons.

The first was the appliance man who came around, took one minute to look in the dishwasher and announced that the machine needed a new pump.

"Yes, I guessed that, I thought maybe you could fix it," I said, only a little terse.

"No, needs a new one. Can't fix it," he said, before stomping back down the hall and promising to order one.

"Let me know how much it'll cost first," I yelled after him.

"Really," I commented to my husband later that day, "it used to be an appliance man would pull the pump out, take it away and bring it back right as rain. Now they just see it's stuffed, get a new one and throw the old one away. What waste!" I continued, wistfully imagining the perfect repair man with his crew-cut, starched overalls and eagle-eye for malfunctioning valves and washers. The price came back. Including labour it would cost about $450.

"Not paying it," I said.

"Fair enough," agreed the husband.

And so we started washing and drying dishes the old way. Pretty soon we were chatting away, the three of us, marvelling at the streak-free glasses, the lack of dirty dishes lying around because they wouldn't fit in the dishwasher, the ability to find whatever you needed because it wasn't hiding in the dishwasher.

I was just about to start flicking my loved ones playfully around the legs with a tea towel, a skill learned at the hands of my brother to defend myself from painful red welts , when the first troubles started.

We had a major disagreement about the dish rack. I didn't like the way it kept getting dirty, they didn't like the way the new one fell over. I wanted a vintage one like we had in my childhood, they wanted something stainless steel and glamorous. I bought one from The Warehouse and everyone shut up - for a while.

Then two of us decided that washing dishes was a bit boring and started wandering off.

"So you best get those dishes done sooner rather than later," said the husband, who technically didn't have to do the dishes as he went and bought the curries.

"This is not the 50s!" I screeched. "You are not the boss of this house. We will do them when we are ready. Feminists live here, in case you hadn't noticed."

We grudgingly washed and dried and then stropped off to our rooms to read The Female Eunuch and Our Bodies Ourselves again.

The next night the oven door broke. Just the small one which we use to cook little things such as cheese on toast or casseroles.

"You're the man of the house, just fix it," I instructed him.

The oven door is now being held shut by a bungee cord - one of the many bungee cords around the property which variously hold gates shut, doors open and washing lines together.

"Okay, so you'll never believe what they've done now," I heard the 12-year-old saying down the phone.