Dying Dishwasher Spurs Appliance Crisis

 When I remodeled my kitchen, the green dishwasher which melted all of my plastics was replaced with a white one that had heat control; the green stove featuring uneven metal coil burners was discarded in favor of a white model with a smooth glass top; the green fridge sporting metal shelves was replaced by an energy efficient white unit containing glass shelving. All the cheap dark corkboard cupboards and drawers were replaced with European style (or so I was told) glossy beige and blue ones.

My modern kitchen!

As a relatively new homeowner, I felt like I had taken a big step towards transforming the dumpy fixer-upper where I lived into a showpiece home.

That was 12 years ago. Since then, every three or four years, I've done a major remodel on a different part of the condo, the most expensive of which was the bathroom, itself worthy of a separate writing.

Thing is, though, I'm wondering if it's time to start all over and again invest in the kitchen.

I'm asking because the "new" dishwasher I got in 2000 is making a loud noise - like a death rattle. Recent Thanksgiving guests could barely converse without shouting over the rhythmic clang-chunk, clang-chunk, clang-chunk sound.

Do all appliances age at the same rate? Will I have to replace everything at the same time?

My worst fear is not the cost, but whether I have the nerve to empty the freezer. See, I love to freeze stuff. I really like the idea of being prepared for that blizzard which strands me in the house for several days with lots of frozen soup on which to survive. So every time I cook, I set something aside and stick it in the freezer. It feels very secure, like money in the bank.

The problem, however, is that I don't take stuff out as much as I put stuff in. It gets to the point where I'm cramming and shoving just to make room for a sandwich baggie of leftovers.

I recently found a jar of unidentified frozen substance that I was pretty sure predated the last couple of blizzards. I thought about thawing it to save the jar, but decided it was too gross to contemplate. I threw it away to make room for a baggie.

There are also a couple pounds of meat someone gave me in 2010. I don't know how long they had it before that. I've heard of people eating 10,000 year old mastodon found frozen in a glacier. The meat in my freezer isn't that old, but I'm still not sure how long I should keep it.

Way in the back of the freezer, I fear, could be items dating back to the Clinton administration.

As I foraged for a snack one afternoon, I found an old ice cream sandwich. It looked ok. But when I bit into it, my teeth encountered something completely dry, spongy, and flavorless. All ice cream had been defrosted away, leaving nothing but a scummy white shell between ancient husks of wafer. I gagged on what was basically a mummified frozen snack. I only finished it because I was hungry.

 Epilogue: The good news is I have cleaned out the freezer and now it's nearly empty. The bad news: they are predicting snow this weekend.