Having grown up in an overpopulated city with lots of old buildings, I learned to do without a lot of life's niceties. The beauty of growing up without something is that you wind up not needing what you don't have. Take that even further and you even wind up not knowing what you don't have. If you followed that shallow and faulty logic, I will attempt to wow you with the things that as an adult living in suburgatory I have learned to live without most of my life. Things that I now live with daily, and in many instances I have come to whole-heartedly loathe, or at the very least, find extraneous.
The most loathsome household 'appliance', in my suburban life, is the garbage disposal. Supposedly the garbage disposal was invented to cut down on food waste and odiferous trash. It is, in short, a trash can right there in your kitchen sink. You read that right - a trash can in the sink. Initially, when I came upon such a modern convenience, I was enthusiastic to the point of getting carried away. My enthusiasm led me to learn many important lessons (the hard way, of course). Lessons include, but are not limited to: pork chop bones do not belong in a garbage disposal, pork chop bones and spoons will make the same teeth shattering noise in the disposal regardless of how many times you flip the convenient little switch to rattle those sonsabitches down into the nether land of your sink, and shrimp tails are not too easily disposed of and may or may not cause your disposal to quit functioning - many experiments have been done with this one and it comes out with 'not' clearly the forerunner. The most important lesson I have learned about the disposal is that if someone who lives in the apartment above you has a faulty disposal, his or her overflow will affect (negatively) your sink and dishwasher function. You are then required to bail out any excess water and other people's food flotsam, which can definitely cause temporary insanity and an insistence on using the term 'bucketing' in lieu of bailing. I have come to terms with having this 'modern convenience' in my home for many years now, but I still treat this filthy, temperamental appliance with the utmost care and consideration. And while I have learned to live alongside the disposal, mostly peaceably, I can't help but wonder: why wouldn't you just use the garbage can (or at the very least the toilet bowl)?
Talk of the disposal, for me, almost always leads to talk of the trash compactor. Again, a nifty little convenience, perhaps for those without legs. When first presented with the compactor, I was curious about how it worked. I was shown that you put the trash in and then change-o presto, the trash is smooshed (yes, I believe that it a word). Done and done, kinda like the Jetson's. Unbeknown to me, we had a trash compactor in our house in New York my whole life. It was called a leg - stick your foot (shoes recommended) into trash can and step - very effective method for smooshing trash. While I don't find the compactor to be as loathsome as the disposal, color me very unimpressed.
Another modern convenience in the suburban landscape is central air conditioning. I know, I know, this is not so modern and many people have enjoyed a freezer like home for eons. I am not one of them. As a child, my parents had air conditioning in one room - theirs. The rest of the rooms of our home were cooled by fans and open windows, and on especially hot, muggy nights, I got to sleep on the floor of the room with the air conditioning. I truly believe, that not only was this important for building character, but helped me avoid sinus issues for much of my life. Now, I'm not going to lie, I like a nice refreshing burst of recycled air as much as the next guy, but I have to ask: is there such a thing as too cold? I find that when I enter a room with air conditioning after having left a room without, I enjoy the coolness that much more, and appreciate the warm spots in a house after having gotten enough cold air for a little while. I guess I like a little control over my body temperature.
As I continue to grow into adulthood, I can only hope that there are technologies that continue to astound and amaze me; maybe I will find them more useful than the ones mentioned above, or maybe I will still walk around wondering what happened to the rotary phone.
This weeks tip:
When your garbage disposal gets too smelly - and trust me it will (especially if you've been experimenting) there are a number of things you can do to deodorize this garbage can in the sink. They actually sell tablets that you can throw in there, or you can throw any citrus peel in there and turn it on. It leaves a nice smell, and also helps dislodge any crud that may have gotten stuck on. I like to use lime, just because I like limes (especially those floating in vodka), but any citrus rind will do. You could also throw baking soda down the black hole with ice cubes. This will deodorize and help to keep the blades sharp (because goodness knows, you don't want dull blades when throwing trash into your sink)
