The kitchen appliance you might be better off without.
July 14th, 2010
Look at all that counter space! Man oh man! I used to live in a teeny tiny studio apartment and would have given my left eye for counterspace like this!
And now it’s mine, all mine. The toaster oven can breathe and I can easily make room to roll out pizza dough. Clearly I don’t live in a studio apartment anymore, but the real reason I have so much extra counter space is because we got rid of our microwave.
*GASP!*
I know, I know! Super crazy stuff. Can you imagine life without a microwave? Probably not. I couldn’t. I first had a microwave when I was about 10 years old. It was one of those old ones with woodgrain and a wind-up dial timer.
I grew up with microwave dinners and reheated leftovers and even tea water heated in mugs in the good ol’ microwave. Not to mention microwave popcorn! Heck, I’m a child of the microwave era! Most of my friends don’t even know how to cook without a microwave and on our recent vacation most of us (myself included) didn’t know how to light the pilot light in our rented house’s oven!
So…what would your life be like without a microwave?
More counterspace
Yes, yes yes!
No microwave dinners
That’s a good thing for your health. Have you read the ingredient labels on those?
Leftovers reheated on the stovetop or oven
Takes a bit longer. Hmmm. Honestly though, it doesn’t take THAT much longer. You’d be surprised. See, here I’m heating up some rice and it takes, oh, a minute or two.
Tea water heated in a teapot.
It almost makes too much sense.
No microwave popcorn
Did you know it’s super easy, much cheaper and healthier to make popcorn in a pot?
An improved attitude towards food
Ok, here I go…I think microwaves are a symbol of convenience at the expense of quality. Right? Everyone knows that stuff made in the microwave tastes rubbery and weird but we do it anyway because it’s easy. And we’re LAZY. We accept sub-par food because it saves us precious, precious time we could be checking our email or watching TV or updating our Facebook status. It’s time to reprioritize, people! The quality of your food creates the quality of your body, mind and life.
Slowing down a little
If Americans slowed down a teensy bit I think we’d be in a better place overall. Agreed? Stress is the #1 complaint I hear from my clients, friends and family. Everyone knows they need to relax. I think things like microwaves have created a culture of fast fast fast. Everything is a moment away, all the time. Living without a microwave means taking an extra few minutes to prepare a meal from scratch, or use a pan to reheat last night’s meal. This isn’t a bad thing. When everything is 1 button push away, we live life at a ridiculous, unsustainable pace. Heck, half of us are on medication to keep us from feeling overwhelmed and anxious. I’m not saying microwaves are the enemy. I’m just sayin’. Think about it.
I know it might sound nuts, so let me tell you how I came to live without my microwave and not miss it one bit. First, I decided I’d simply cut back on using it. I ate my brown bag lunches at room temperature instead of heating them up at work. Not a big deal depending on the lunch. I started experimenting with reheating stuff on the stovetop.
My husband (I never would have predicted this) liked the challenge of not using the microwave. So we just kept trying. We used it sometimes, but mostly we found a way not to. After about a year, the microwave was just sitting there collecting dust. It was my husband who suggested we get rid of it. I think I originally objected to this scary thought, but finally we agreed to put it in the basement.
And it’s still there, 2 years later.
I don’t even think about it anymore. The one drawback is probably that we have to wash more pots and pans because we are always using them for heating stuff up. But I prefer that to worrying about heating plastic containers in the microwave and I definitely enjoy my extra counter space!
What do you think, could you live without a microwave?
