What appliances can teach us.

First, I won’t even mention that its been two weeks since I last wrote a post. 🙁 That way I won’t feel like I have to say, “I’m sorry for not keeping up my blog like I should.” But I will say, “THANK YOU to all my loyal readers who stick with me through the feast and famine of my post writing.” 😀

I also wanted to say that Paul’s boot cast has come off and he’s back to full duty at work!!! Thank you Lord. 🙂

Now, I know that title sounds so funny, but honestly my appliances, or lack thereof, have taught me a lot these past few weeks. First, our dishwasher went out on us about 3 weeks ago. Our landlord had it looked at and it was declared dead. He thought he might just try and replace the pump, but I guess has now decided to give us a used one. I’m not sure if it will work, since the one we had was on the smaller side, but it’s his house, we’ll see what he decides. But as of late, he hasn’t decided anything, we have been hand washing every kitchen item that we dirty. Every. Single. One. Add to that that our stove has been acting weird for months (yes our landlord knows about it) and at times burners don’t work. I will set a pot of potatoes on the burner to get it boiling, walk away, come back 15 minutes later and it’s still sitting there cold because the burner never heated up. 🙁 I can usually adjust it a bit, and get it working again, but when I’m trying to make a meal on a time schedule, that will really throw things off. And lastly, our microwave went out on us this week. When you opened the door it turned on and started ‘cooking’ even though there was no time or anything set. Yep, when I microwave starts running when you open the door, it’s time to get rid of that microwave. 😉

Ok, now that you know the background of our appliance woes, let me tell you what not having those appliances have taught me. In a nutshell, it’s taught me to live more intentionally. It’s surprising how much I don’t really think about what I’m going to make or do in the kitchen before hand, I just go in there and expect to have what I want to eat, and have it quickly. When you don’t have a microwave, you honestly have to live more intentionally. You need to think through what you are going to have for lunch before lunch time. Because if you need something defrosted, you can’t quickly throw it in the microwave and defrost it. You also have to relearn how to cook without such a modern convenience. You need to learn how to melt a couple of tablespoons of butter differently, or soften up some frozen fruit for a smoothie. You no longer can have a ‘quick’ lunch by throwing a frozen burrito in the nuker, and if it’s is the only timer you have, you have now lost any way to time what you are cooking. Who would have thought such a small appliance would do so much, but it also made it much easier to rush through our day. We could have a ‘quick’ lunch, shoveling quick cooked food in our face, then move on to the next rushed thing we need to do.

Not having a microwave also played an effect with no dishwasher, because when you don’t have a microwave to quickly cook, melt, reheat or cook something, you use a lot more pots and pans to get the same things done that you might have only used one bowl for. Having more dirty dishes, without a dishwasher, slows you down even more. With just those two appliances out of commission, our lives have been forced to slow down a lot, it’s forced us to be more intentional and thinking things through more. It’s made us slow down and chat a bit more while washing dishes after each meal so they don’t pile up to an unmanageable pile at the end of the day. And it’s made us realize we like this slowed down pace a lot more.

Now, you might wonder why we didn’t just go get a new microwave. Honestly, we just didn’t have the money to run out and get one. At first, we all thought it shouldn’t be that big of deal. We have a small toaster oven, that will do. That’s until you realize how much you use the microwave. But it became a challenge to us, could we live without a microwave? Could we learn to warm things up on the stove and in the toaster oven? Could we all slow down a bit and learn that we can’t rush through all our meals? Well it’s been a week, and yes, we have learned that. We are doing pretty good without a microwave. We bought a smaller steamer basket so we can easily steam veggies that we might have warmed up in the microwave. We bought ourselves an actual, old fashioned dial timer for our kitchen, no longer having access to the digital one that was on our microwave. And we bought a dish rack so we can each individually wash whatever dishes we’ve used after each meal and let them dry on the rack, so the dishes don’t pile up. And honestly, now that we have gotten over the speed bumps, I think we all are quite use to not having a microwave. We’ve actually priced a bigger toaster oven, that even has a rotisserie option, that we might save up for, instead of a microwave. I think the real test will be this coming holiday week. I will see what else I use the microwave for without ‘thinking’ about it. If we can get through that, I think we might just become a microwave free family. But we all want a dishwasher again, especially before the holiday season starts. That’s one modern convenience I would rather keep. 😉