By Fabian Borowiecki / Herald Forum
One of the more common and useful appliances in most home kitchens today is a dishwasher.
It is one of those things that just makes life a bit simpler and allows one to relax a bit after your meal. When you’re done eating and putting away any leftovers in the refrigerator, just pop most of the dishes into the dishwasher instead of spending the next 20 minutes standing at the kitchen sink washing and rinsing them.
Dishwashers save you time and effort as well as saving the water from handwashing all those plates, forks, knives, mugs and whatever. Even larger items, such as serving dishes and casseroles can be put in the dishwasher. When the number of items are deemed enough, just add your detergent, turn it on, and go do something else that you want to do. A couple hours later and all the items are now nice and clean and dry and ready to be put away for the next days’ meals.
Unfortunately, dishwashers don’t do well with some items, like aluminum baking sheets, fine glassware and oversized roasting pans. Unclad aluminum can corrode. Fine glassware has a habit of cracking due to the extreme temperatures as well as the force of the dishwasher spray. And then there’s those items that are just too big or have odd shapes such as long-necked decanters that the soap spray will not completely clean or rinse.
But largely, dishwashers are relatively safe and very efficient in cleaning day to day dishes.
In some ways, the utility of dishwasheres also applies elsewhere in our modern lives. One example being the drunk driver emphasis patrols that are scheduled every now and then (“Slain Marysville trooper to be honored with emphasis patrol,” The Herald, Sept. 23). Troopers will scour our highways and byways and remove the contaminants to yield safe and secure thoroughfares for others to drive on with a greatly reduced chance of literally running into one of the offenders.
It’s a shame this concept can’t be used to remove the contaminating particles in various neighborhoods around our city, specifically those people who use firearms to settle any and all disagreements (“Crash after Everett double shooting closes I-5 north,” The Herald, Sept. 23, 2024; and “Judge maintains $2M bail for teen accused of Alderwood mall shooting,” The Herald, Sept. 9).
Maybe our city and county leaders could be proactive and give at least a thought or two as to how the “dishwasher concept” could be applied to these irresponsible people with firearms? Or, are we to consider that these shooters are like those items that dishwashers can’t handle very well, like aluminum baking sheets or wine glasses, that can only be handled when they become a problem, as when they shoot someone?
Fabian Borowiecki lives in Everett.
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