Rose-Aimée Automne T. Morin: Marc, something new is happening in my life. Can I request your mentoring services?
Marc Cassivi: “Mentor”, I don’t know, Rose, but since we’ve known each other, it will give me great pleasure!
R.-A. A.T.M.: Thank you so much. For several months, at friends’ dinners, a delicate subject has emerged: the dishwasher. We start to insist on storage methods or even on what goes there or not (my boyfriend has already put caps there, can you believe?). Debating such a subject… Is this what growing old is? You know better than me, be my guide!
M. C.: I felt like I was really getting older when I started reading articles on personal finance… But it’s very personal. I would tell you that in our house, the dishwasher issue was resolved a long time ago. Cooking is my kingdom! When we risk placing the dishes there haphazardly, I go back behind them. But that, of course, remains between you and me.
R.-A. A.T.M.: Oh, no! So you are in the psychorigid team! What’s your problem? What does it matter to you if we put our fork tips up or our glass where a bowl “should” be?
M. C.: My dear Rose, where you see psychorigidity, I see discipline, structure, organization! I don’t have problems, I only have solutions. The fork tip facing down is so my playful cat doesn’t inadvertently get hurt. What about your Noune-Alexandre? The glass should always be in its place, where it takes up minimal space. I reassure you: I do not have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Just sometimes a sudden and fleeting desire to lose in the trash these bowls that my son loves, but which fit so poorly into my porcelain Tetris game from IKEA…
R.-A. A.T.M.: Hmm, I detect nuance, but I fear lying (and don’t try to mollify me by bringing my cat into it!). You’re going to tell me that you don’t complain when you notice that a member of your family hasn’t followed your protocol?
M. C.: Never, I swear, but there’s no shortage of desire! If it wasn’t for the fear of being judged. It’s also not as if I systematically alternate between black and white plates when putting them in the dishwasher (as I have already been told). I don’t have any, black plates…
R.-A. A.T.M.: Congratulations for your control! Maybe you should become the moderator of my dinners, with all this maturity. I know someone who, upon learning that a friend placed her plates in a random and sometimes even diagonal manner, muttered: “she’s a psychopath.” I just found her free. I believe in dishwasher anarchy. It is spontaneity, improvisation, a rejection of routine and control. Our life is so regulated, there is no way to leave a little space for disorganization?
M. C.: It’s clear she’s a psychopath. I am willing, because I am told this argument at regular intervals at home, to accept that those who are disordered are more creative. This is what my son maintains to explain the commotion in his room. BUT NOT IN MY DISHWASHER! I take care of the management of plates and glasses, but also of its maintenance. It’s me who cleans the filters of this pinkish mud that accumulates there; me who manages freezing and thawing in winter (my dishwasher is 15 years old and it is poorly insulated). In short, I have the right of veto in all things that concern him! Not wasting space between cups and saucers means not wasting energy, water, electricity. It’s making an ecological choice! I have the impression of transforming myself into a former CAQ minister in front of you. I’m one jet of water away from running my dishwasher at midnight!
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Marc Cassivi and Rose-Aimée Automne T. Morin
R.-A. A.T.M.: Should this be washed in the dishwasher? Let me ask you another question now: why do the chaotic and the rigid end up together, do you think? There are tons of testimonials to support this theory on the online forum Reddit. My favorite comment comes from one Coley Tangerina. I translate it: “In every couple, there is one person who fills the dishwasher like a Scandinavian architect and another who fills it like a raccoon on methamphetamines. »
M. C.: It makes me laugh a lot… because it’s true! I’m writing to you right now from my office at home, where everything is tidy without a single piece of paper sticking out. In my library, just behind, there are more than 2000 films on DVD and Blu-ray, classified by origin (Quebec, American, international) and in alphabetical order… Every time my son borrows one, I have to check that it has been put back in the correct place. In the office next to mine, just on the other side of the corridor, there is a chaos that creates anxiety in me just thinking about it: books stacked pell-mell, in all directions, notebooks of a another decade, trinkets that you no longer know what to do with them. I won’t name any names, but it’s clearly not the office of a Scandinavian architect…
R.-A. A.T.M.: Do you love him anyway?
M. C.: What a question!
R.-A. A.T.M.: Because the risk of it going to waste is apparently real! In 2018, the Council on Contemporary Families (an organization that conducts research with American families) revealed that among heterosexual couples, women who do the dishes alone experience more conflicts and enjoy a less fulfilling sex life1. You might think that the dishwasher is a solution to this sad fate… Except that no. I burst out laughing reading the results of a survey French study carried out last winter for the cleaning products company Sun2. Hold on tight: 42% of respondents aged 25 to 34 have already considered breaking up because of disagreements over the storage of the dishwasher. Want to leave someone for that? You really have to stick to your method! Unless it has nothing to do with the dishwasher, ultimately… What if the object embodied the projection of greater frustrations?
M. C.: I prefer to suffer in silence…
R.-A. A.T.M.: I still note that 35% of respondents believe that their partner is sexier when he or she puts the dishwasher away. This is a simple way to rekindle the flame. Or, at the very least, a statistic to slip into the next dinner of aging friends… Thank you for your insight, Marc. I knew I could count on you.
1. Read the Council on Contemporary Families article
2. Check out the survey