Dispossessed

Tonight, while I was doing the dishes, the following startling realization occurred to me: my life is significantly impaired by the absence of a garbage disposal in our sink. But when you've never had to live without one, the garbarge disposal doesn't seem all that valuable. If you're anything like me, you've been taking that at-times noisy but mostly unseen and unheard device for granted. However, if your disposal were spirited away in the middle of the night, you'd be amazed at the impact on your life, let me tell you.

The first problem with not having a disposal is that, since you can no longer dump any food at all down the drain, you'll need to purchase one of those infernal screen drainplugs to catch any falling detritus. The worst aspect of the screen is that food inevitably piles up in a unsightly mess, and you can never fully clean the damn thing. Despite your best efforts, there is always a noodle or two and perhaps a piece of vegatable matter that won't release its grasp of the drainplug. Unless you have an inventory of unused drainplugs or clean it with pliers, this is something you'll have to live with, like it or not.

Second, you'll find that breaking the habit of behaving as if you have a disposal is hard, if not impossible. I still to this day find myself tossing food into the sink as if the unwanted pieces had somewhere to go. They don't. They pile up, hidden amongst the dishes stacked in the sink, until they clog the screen, causing a situation which requires that you dip your arm into the filthy water to remove the offending matter, thus clearing the way for waterflow. No matter how good whatever you cooked or are cooking will taste and regardless of the quality of the ingredients, this is not a pleasant experience by any measure.

Third, not having a disposal makes for a lot more garbage -- garbarge that, because its contents consist of soon-to-be-rotting organic matter, you must usually take out immediately. Admittedly, this only requires walking down the hall for me, but sometimes that's the last thing I want to do after cooking a meal sans disposal.

There is one final reason why I miss the disposal, and this may very well be a reason unique to me. In the past, when I was making something involving fresh herbs, say basil, mint, or cilantro, I could take some of the leftovers, toss them in the disposal, hit the switch, and be treated to the pungent scent of whatever herb I'd used. Sometimes, I'd even throw in a half of a lemon to spread lemon scent throughout the kitchen. But no longer. Now, to get the same effect or at least something similar, I have to rely on aerosol sprays containing "lemony scent" or "fresh herbal fragrance." And that is not something I'm going to do.

At least I now know the first question I'll ask when I'm purchasing a house: does it have a garbage disposal?