Throwing Away The Dishes

Shortly after moving away from home, I found myself working for a paper company and making more money than my father ever earned, and more than my older brother earned with his Master's Degree in Social Work. Plus, I neither drank or used recreational drugs. Rather than doing the responsible thing, and packing that money away or investing it, I had the idea that if I was setting up a home for myself, I had to have stuff.

So, for reasons that shouldn't have made any sense to me at the time, I had a kitchen full of cookware and tableware. Maybe I felt that it wasn't right to have empty shelves in my kitchen.

There was a tendency, sometimes, for dishes to pile up in the sink, and since I had so many of them, there was no urgent need to wash a dirty one since there were plenty of clean ones. Of course, the more dishes there were in the sink, the less likely I was to want to wash them.

After I adopted my son, I became concerned about bad habits and the like, but the bigger the pile of dirty dishes, the less thrilled either of us were about taking on the job, and I didn't want to spend my time yelling at my son to do the dishes.

One day, I started thinking about all of the dishes and cookware that I had, and the fact that, most days, there were only the two of us using them. Even when we had company, we were never entertaining whole neighborhoods at one time.

I realized that I didn't really need all those dishes, so I picked out six or seven plates, bowls, and tableware to keep, and put them aside, along with a frying pan, a couple of pots, and so on. Anything else, I decided, could be considered disposable and thrown in the trash after using them.

It was kind of fun throwing dirty dishes away, and it wasn't too long before I didn't own enough kitchenware to fill the sink, and it was never an unmanageable job to do the dishes.

As my son grew older, we developed a policy where he cleaned up after himself, and I cleaned up after myself, and we took turns doing things like washing the dishes when we both ate together. If he did the laundry, he could keep whatever change or cash that he found in my pockets, and I made a point of leaving something in there. But that's another story that I have told here somewhere before.

When my son made something to eat while I was at work, he would wash his dishes. Of course, it didn't always work so smoothly but, for the most part, it did. I am bringing this up because, almost fifty years later, my son brought it up on the phone the other day. He still laughs to remember when he could throw dishes away instead of washing them.

 

I am pretty sure that I brought it up in a post here sometime in the past few years but, since it's a short story, I'll repeat it for anyone who might be interested. One day, we were going to travel somewhere so I took out a few hundred dollars in cash from my paycheck. It was in the pocket of a pair of pants when my son did the laundry.

He came into the room with a big grin on his face, and reminded me about the rule about his being able to keep any cash he found in my pockets. He was maybe ten or twelve, I don't remember. While he fully expected to give it back, I told him that a deal was a deal, and he could keep it. I think he bought himself a stereo or something.

 

Since it sort of fits this topic, I thought I'd quote a post I made a few years ago, rather than tell it again.

 

I am pleased that it worked out for you; I'm not surprised either, as those are valuable principles.

I guess I figured that the example of someone in their early twenties willing to take in a seven-year-old in need of a home and to spend his time working to provide that home for him was one that would survive a few broken dishes. Apparently, that worked too, because my son is in his fifties now, and still married to the girl he dated in high school. He raised two fine kids and was able to buy a home for himself in California, where only about half of working adults own their own homes.

I believe that the things that our children learn from us are not always as direct as they are in the storybooks. They learn by our successes as well as from our failures, and they learn to love us because of our relationships with them rather than the things we do or do not do.

Financial responsibility can be learned by the example of a parent exhibiting financial responsibility, but it can also be learned through the example of parents who are irresponsible, and the relationship doesn't suffer as long so long as it is based on love. While the example of frugal living is a good one and particularly useful in teaching children to make do with less, there is something to be learned from not having to do that. In other words, you can live a comfortable life if you know how to make do with what you have, but not everyone has the same limitations. When you earn more than enough money to pay your bills, you can afford to be less frugal.

My best earning years included those in which I was raising my son, but I earned that. I didn't inherit it. When people in my family died, the family came to together to pay the bills, rather than to fight over the inheritance. I moved to California with a few dollars in my pocket and the clothes that I could fit into a backpack. A few years later, I was raising a son, and sending money home to my father.

Yes, I wish I had more money sacked away for retirement, but that has little or nothing to do with throwing away the dishes. I invested my nest egg into an ambulance company that barely paid my bills, so the only return on my investment was that I had a great time with it.

You worked toward a time when you could afford a summer place, a boat, and other luxuries. I could have afforded that in my 20s, but I chose to do something else with it instead. Rather than spending my free time partying, like many other people my age, I was home with my son. We threw dishes away, we took vacations, went to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm often, and we had a standing account with Pizza Man. My son didn't have an allowance but as long as he did his share of whatever needed to be done around the house, which he did, he had spending money. If he wanted something, there were ways in which he could earn it. It worked, but then other parents have done completely different things with similar results.

I was disappointed that he wasn't interested in college, particularly since the company I was working for would have paid most of the expenses. Instead, he married soon after high school, but he found good jobs and later owned his own construction company, owned his own home, and raised a family. Most importantly, he feels that he has lived a good life, and that's the most important thing.