I know a lot of people who LOVE their dishwashers. I’m not one of them. After talking with my mother-in-law tonight it might be possible that perhaps my dishwasher isn’t working properly. The people who lived here before us had five kids and did not even know the basics of home maintenance. So who knows if they even realized that the dishwasher wasn’t working correctly!

I try not to use it because it never gets everything clean. In fact, I used it Sunday night because I had other things that I needed to do. I put a few things in there and figured that it would do the job. I was wrong. When I went to put the dishes away tonight I noticed that EVERYTHING had a greasy film on it! I ended up washing everything by hand anyways. I should have just taken the time to wash them the correct way the other night, I guess.

Jay laughs at me because I use the dishwasher like a built-in drying rack. We don’t have a lot of extra counter space so it’s nice to be able to wash the dishes, and then stack them in here to dry. I figure that if it’s going to be taking up space I might as well utilize it. Right?

I’ve had people give me tips about how you need to soak the dishes before using the dishwasher. Or you need to scrub them to make sure nothing is caked on the dishes. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Why would I wash my dishes by hand and then run them through the dishwasher?? I might as well do it all once and be done with it. After Sunday night’s mishap I guess that I’ll be washing them by hand all of the time. It really isn’t worth it to me to have somebody look at it right now to see if it needs to be fixed.

I had been asked for pictures of my new kitchen island. It was a Valentine’s gift from Jay. I hadn’t realized that I needed one, but we had talked about it at one point. At first we weren’t sure how we liked it because we felt that it took up more room than we wanted to give up, but after living with it for a while I love it! I find myself doing a lot of my kitchen prep at the island. I fix my lunch on the island. I used it to roll out my cookie dough the last time I made cookies. I didn’t realize how much I was using it until Jay pointed it out, but he’s right. I really do love it. WAY more than the dishwasher!

It’s nothing fancy, but I like it. Jay had to assemble it (and he proudly told me that he did it without looking at the instructions), and it’s on wheels. I move it around quite a bit. The wheels don’t lock properly so Jay has to build me some blocks to chock the wheels, but other than that it’s great. It has a cutting board top and a little leaf that folds up if you need a little more work space. It really is wonderful!