Appliances and Housewares

Ever notice how breakable the appliances and housewares have become? Almost everything has plastic parts now that break off easily. If our family can get two years out of a vacuum, we are doing well. The other day, a whole section of wheels came off the bottom of the vacuum and can't be put back on again. Fortunately, we still have the front wheels and it works without the back ones. Our carpet is low pile, so the extra close shave with the vacuum probably benefits it. The hose attachments are cracked and the top of the housing is being held together with black electrical tape because the place the screws go in cracked and the screws won't hold any more. I suppose if my husband and I were the only ones living here and cleaning, we would get a lot more mileage out of our vacuums. Kids are terribly hard on things. As soon as Costco brings out a coupon on their vacuums, I'll be replacing this one.

One solution to frequent vacuum replacement would be, of course, to do all the vacuuming myself. My kids would love it, I am sure, and my vacuum would survive much better because I would refrain from trying to suck up socks, kleenex, lego blocks, and stray cats. However, one of my goals in life is not to be a maid to my kids. As soon as they start to toddle, they are shown how to plug it in, turn it on, and push it.

Another item that sees a great deal of use is our kitchen stove. A few years ago my husband bought me a new stove from Costco for my birthday. Our other stove had given up the ghost and refused to be revived. This new stove starting showing signs of mortality within days of arriving at our home. It has a plastic housing around the part where the controls are. This cracked at both corners from the heat of the stove. As it was under warranty, we promptly had it replaced. It cracked again within days. We replaced it again. Again it cracked, and after it reached the point where the repair man recognized my voice on the phone, we gave up replacing it and instead have learned to love its "weathered" look. This stove is one of those glass-topped jobs, which I have come to love and adore. Cleaning out burner trays was the bane of my life and it was a rare day when I wouldn't find something incinerated in the bottom of one, or we didn't set off the smoke alarm because someone turned the burner on before cleaning it out. All I do with this one is give it a good wipe down and use a razor in a handle to scrape away what can't be wiped. When I die, I would like my stove top buried with me.

Something else that sees a lot of wear and tear in our home is the dishware. I have yet to find the dish that my family cannot destroy in record time. My original stoneware dish set that I was given upon marrying has long since disappeared. So have several sets of Corel Living Wear which, contrary to what they said, is quite capable of being broken and shattered with the additional drawback of breaking up into a zillion needle-sharp shards. Melamine dishes just aren't what they used to be. I remember watching one of the kids take one and put it upside down on the floor and then stomping on it so that it cracked. Of the 20 mugs we own, only 4 have handles on them.

[An aside: Why do children do these things? They say children learn most by example, but I assure you that my husband and I do not make it a habit to stomp on our dishware, walk on the dining table, or jump on the living room furniture. We also don't pick our noses and eat the pickings, shove foreign objects in them or plug the toilet with tinker toys and modelling clay.]

I thought I had found a solution to the dish dilemma when we invested in enamel dish ware that I found in the camping section of a local hardware store. It might become dented if you stomped it, but you couldn't break it into a jigsaw puzzle. Alas, the enamel chips. And when it chips, it begins to rust. I now am the proud owner of some plates and bowls that have rusted completely through in spots. We have to arrange the food carefully around these holes so that nothing leaks out upon the table.

If anyone has a solution, beyond investing in paperplates, please let me know.