The Importance of a Good Sink

For most of my growing up years, it was the five of us. Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Sister, me. We moved a lot. Just about every year, in fact. The family mostly went for crappy, out-of-the-way, farmhouse-ish rentals with a bit of land. I remember a few we had to clean and fix up BEFORE we moved in. Anyone ever scrape spaghetti noodles and fly specks off a ceiling so they could wash and paint it?

The one constant household job I remember having as a kid was washing up evening dishes with my sister. It didn't matter if it was Thanksgiving Day or Fast Sunday, we washed dishes in the evening. We both cleared the table. I washed, wiped down the counters, and swept the floor. Sister rinsed, dried and put away dishes or pots that didn't fit on the drainboard. She also acted as quality control for my occasionally sloppy washing job.  Which irritated me no end. Because I am the eldest. But it was a very important job. If the folks took one dirty dish out of the cupboard, they'd pull out every dish we had for us to re-wash. Trust me, it only takes once.

Since we moved so much and became so intimate with the dish-washing tools, I became somewhat of a connoiseur of kitchen sinks in crappy old farmhouses. This is my favorite:

This is an enameled steel 1950's double sink with drainboard.  It comes with its own backsplash. It has a little molded spot where a bar of soap can go - which I don't use for soap 'cause I use a pump-type bottle for handsoap - but I put my sponge there. It already had the hole for the sprayer which is a must for any kitchen in my opinion, but I've dealt with many a kitchen without one.

Of all its many virtues, what I love most about this sink is its drainboards. You can wipe the bits off the drainboards directly into the sink with no seams to get hung up on. I have almost no counterspace, so the drainboards serve the dual purposes of counter and dish drainer. Plus, I don't have to have the wooden or coated wire dish drainer sitting on my counter. Plus, every time I do dishes I smile. I think of my sister standing right next to me. Poring over each dish. Searching for that speck of food left on it so she can dunk it back in the dishwater. Turd.  :)