Last Christmas, I received a blender. It was shiny, easy to use and exactly what I needed to make smoothies, with which I have an unhealthy relationship. This past week, I finally pulled it out of the box and got around to making a smoothie. I had made a smoothie before, but never in this context. This process revealed to me how truly agonizing blenders can be.
The first thing I do when making a smoothie is run to the community fridge of my residence hall and grab my ingredients. No, I don’t have a minifridge in my room. I don’t like big appliances and I will not change my mind. After completing the arduous trek back to my room, I sit on the floor with my frozen fruits, orange juice and the blender-jar thing. I blend it all and have a wonderful smoothie. I go to class, drink it all and return a few hours later.
This system has a number of problems, the first of which is that my blender is on the floor. All my outlets are full and it somehow has the shortest cord of any appliance I have ever used. So, it sits on the floor under my bed. Every morning I sit there in a fetal position, my favorite of the sitting positions, watching my bananas and mangoes get pulverized into liquidy goodness.
The second major issue is that this blender is truly the loudest thing I have heard in my entire life. I swear I have heard softer shotgun blasts. Keep in mind that my smoothie shenanigans are confined within the thin walls of a college dorm room. No one has complained yet, but I know that my neighbors are forming a pact of some sort. In fairness to me, I usually use my blender after 10 a.m., but nevertheless its ability to shatter all eardrums in a 20-foot radius is definitely still an issue.
The third issue, and the absolute worst part about being a blender owner, a blender dad if you will, is the cleaning. I say this in the most genuine way possible, but cleaning my blender is truly the most torturous thing I have ever done. That may have some underlying problems along with it, something about me being a spoiled brat, but I’m dead serious when I say that it is truly the worst part of my day. After about an hour, my smoothie cup goes from a glass of paradise to a jar of nasty sludge. Due to my schedule, I normally don’t have the opportunity to clean my blender until a few hours after use, so when I finally make it to the community kitchen sink, I am pouring out a gross, orange mud filled with lost potential and the occasional half-frozen banana slice that the blender mercifully preserved. I stand at the sink washing with boiling hot water for about 15 minutes until I make it back to my room with sopping wet pieces of my blender, waiting to start the process again the next day.
Photo by Katelyn Kingcade/The Threefold Advocate