It is quite obviously beyond the scope of my abilities to open the dishwasher and inspect the dishes within. I will remember – usually 3 times out of 10 – if I was the one to load, add soap, and run it the night before, that it probably needs to be emptied; but beyond that I'm certainly not earning any points towards husband of the year.
Megan's parents have a magnet that says "Dirty / Clean" that you can rotate to indicate the status. That won't work for us, because – and don't ask me how this is even physically possible, as I had never until this point seen a dishwasher without a metal face, but – ours doesn't. I guess it's plastic or something.
My parents' last dishwasher had a lock that you engaged by sliding a lever from one side to the other – so the easiest way to tell was to pull on the door. If it won't open it, they're clean. Again, this won't work for us, because ours has a simple clipping mechanism that locks nearly every time you close the door.
Surely it would be simple enough if it needed to be run every day and, therefore, emptied every day – the first one home would probably take care of them. But as it's just the two of us, the thing probably gets run every 4 or 5 days on average.
So I turn to you, dear readers. Do you have any creative ideas for indicating when the dishwasher is clean? Ideally it would be something that could be in close proximity to the dishwasher itself – which is not really adjacent to anything except the sink and some cabinets. It would be dog and cat proof – anything below counter-top level that isn't strongly adhered to its surface is likely to be eaten by the dog, while anything high up is likely to be knocked down and batted around by the cat, and then eaten by the dog. It would also be something that would be easy to "turn on" while turning the dishwasher itself on – like the magnet – so that there is no excuse for forgetting.
Re-anonymize should be a word. Why isn't it?
Anonymize is! This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
My hospital recently installed gates for all of the parking lots, and you have to pay to park for anything more than an hour. I can understand charging visitors, but the same system is in place around the corner for the medical office buildings.
Both my rheumatologist and gastroenterologist are back there, and I'm already paying a specialist co-pay to see them. If my appointments start to take more than an hour and I end up paying to get my car out of the lot, I'm probably going to switch doctors – and that's pretty ridiculous.
Am I overreacting?
