Our dishwasher gave up the ghost yesterday. A few weeks ago, we first noticed an odd, garlicky-plasticky-pesticidy smell rising from it. The smell was so noxious that I had to leave the house one afternoon while Husband ran a few cycles of bleach and vinegar. It was the kind of smell that lives in memory, sickening you as you think, “Don’t remember the smell. Don’t remember the smell.” Yesterday, when we opened the dishwasher after a cycle, we realized that it had failed to draw any water. I’m not sure if the smell is related to the mechanical failure, but the upshot is that I’ve been washing dishes by hand.

Hand-washing reminds me of my stint in the Peace Corps, where there were no dishwashers. Sometimes, there were no hot water heaters in the kitchen, so you had to heat up water on the stove to do dishes. Two of the four apartments I lived in did have kitchen water heaters, and during the winter it was a luxury to run that heater at full blast and wash the dishes in hot, hot water, immersing your arms up to the elbow in an effort to keep warm.

I say “luxury” because the fuel that heated the running water was propane, fed from a tank that had to be hauled to the kitchen from the closest local shop. Tanks were heavy and cost money, money that was better spent on transportation to seaside resort towns and formaldehyde-flavored beer, so washing dishes with hot, freely-flowing water was something you did only when feeling particularly flush.

Those hot-water heaters were dangerous. They were mounted directly on the wall of the kitchen, with a rubber hose running from the propane tank to the heater. The propane could leak from the heater jets, through the hose, or at the junction of the hose and the tank. We learned to rub dish soap on the hose periodically to look for bubbles that indicated leaks. I was able to dig up some old video of my kitchen and bathroom with a nice lingering shot of the hot water heater, as well as a good view of the double toilet.

But functioning heaters were even more dangerous than leaky ones. Big units had powerful jets that could quickly consume the oxygen in an unventilated room. You always had to crack a window while washing dishes or showering.

This is incontrovertible proof that housework is not only bad for you, but is potentially fatal.