The Scrubbing Fairies

As I mentioned here, I can give my family a good lecture like nobody's business. One of the most frequent is regarding the dishwasher:

It doesn't matter if you believe in Scrubbing Fairies or not -- we don't
have them! There are no magic fairies that come along and scrub the
massive chunks of food off of your plates after you pile them in the dishwasher
that way! The fairies are not even able to lift a plate that you have
smashed against another plate! You're going to have to rinse your plate
before you put it in the dishwasher!

Don't even get me started on "but why wash your plate before you put it in the dishwasher" lecture. If my children were capable of thoroughly scraping a plate, we wouldn't have to rinse. But they aren't, or refuse to, so rinsing is SO necessary.

Troy is an awesome dad and husband -- but doesn't back me up too much on this one. "I don't know what she's talking about kids; I've seen those fairies. They like washing your dishes." Granted, Scrubbing Fairies would be glorious, and if you have any, I'll hire them. Until then, we're rinsing.

At one point I was folding clothes in the laundry room, just off the kitchen and heard the clanking of dishes, while a child chanted, "I believe! I believe!"

"What do you believe?"

Child appears at laundry room door looking sheepish: "Oh. I didn't know you were there."

"What do you believe?"

"In the scrubbing fairies."

Maybe Troy has taught them that the chant enables the fairies to work.

Tonight, after an equal number of dishes came out of the dishwasher dirty as came out clean, I cleaned out the interior of the dishwasher -- wiped out the door, cleaned out the spray arm, all kinds of fun. There will be a new lecture on Scrubbing Fairies tonight.

Things I learned:

• It's relatively easy to take off a dishwasher spray arm -- but your owner's manual won't tell you that.
• Band-Aids do not travel easily through a dishwasher spray arm.
• Bathroom tweezers are barely strong enough to pull a band-aid through the jet of a spray arm.

Someone should warn my family that a lecture is brewing. . .