Rookie Mama: The sign said long-haired freaky people need not appliances

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

My husband and I purchased our second home 16 years ago last week, a fairly new build at the time. I suppose it’s not fair to say that the kitchen came with appliances of questionable quality – although I sure had my questions – because our family, which mathematically tripled since then with our swift move from two to a sextet, has highest demands for our appliances.

We’ve since replaced nearly every appliance in our busy dining and cooking space tucked among cabinets with Scotch tape markings of kiddo drawings of yore, countertops that saw better days, all on wooden floors and treads worn by time and Red Flyer Big Wheel loops around the kitchen island by our now-teen.

I know full well that appliances surviving five years or longer today is like 20 years in 1990s-years, because every single person ever knows things aren’t built to last as they once were.

My parents had the same television set, washer and dryer, refrigerator, throughout my childhood without needing to replace them regularly, and yours probably did, too.

Back when we used to call it a television "set" years before the stream.

I wasn’t a child of the avocado appliance era, but those things lasted – and proudly so – well into my kiddo-hood from my parents’ generation.

Today I still use my mother’s and mother-in-law’s handed down and indestructible dusty rose and orange Tupperware pieces, which hold up beautifully and put my 2000s-era storage containers of the same brand name – more like Tupper-worse-for-wear – to shame.

This column is not about appliance demise as it is about timing, and even a bit of gratitude sprinkled in.

Last week, my stovetop was the latest casualty to die an unexpected death and go to domestic device heaven, and as one can imagine, timing of these things is never ideal.

My glass top range cracked, and I blame my Dutch oven.

See – Just another example of how old-school cooking methods crush the newer contraptions.

Our replacement stove won’t arrive for two more weeks, and so we adapt, using our trusty camp Blackstone grill for our stovetop needs in the interim.

I’m thankful the rainy but warmer May weather has allowed me to grill outside during this momentary inconvenience, unlike a time years ago in which we lost power in a snowstorm and had to cook outside.

In a snowstorm.

I’m outdoorsy, but definitely not that outdoorsy.

This temporary detour of plans allows us to not only take a beat to be decidedly creative in how we meal prep, but gives us an opportunity to be thankful for the functioning gadgets we do have, use regularly, and to which we seldom give a second cooking-sprayed thought.

In motherhood, my favorite innovation I’ve witnessed is the advent of curbside grocery pickup.

Because I remember all too well living the weekly Tetris game feeling like a one-horse-open-sleigh dragging double carts around the Dairy aisle, dodging oncoming shoppers as best I awkwardly could, and the hours-long process of groceries when I only had two kiddos.

Because I’ve lived through this, I whisper a prayer of thanks each time I pull up to the grocery store and kindly attendants cart out my online groceries for me and help me bag up the breads and bananas and bodega goods aplenty.

I never take this for granted, because I’ve lived that transition. 

I want to leave the one-horse-open awkward sleigh rides with double Tetris carts-in-narrow-aisles far in the past among the VCRs and dial-up.

But kitchen appliances of convenience? They’ve existed my entire life.

And I don’t miss them until they are gone.

Out like an oven light.

How did they do it before the Crockpots and the coffee makers, the refrigerators and ranges?

I venture it sure was an adventure to get the daily things done.

I adore camping with my family every summer and cooking in the wild– as wild as a campground can deign to be – but at the end of the long weekend, I’m happy to be snug as a bug who wants to give my dishwasher an epic hug.

So today I’m grateful.

I may be down a stove range with a replacement arriving on a date that also ranges, but it will come.

And years from now when this story is long forgotten, my hand-me-down Tupperware dishes will still be here to witness the next great appliance replacement tale.

But not too soon.

So cheers to May, and the way we pivot in times of appliances gone awry.

Because I’ll soon again be cooking at home, home on the range.

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!