Dear LPG readers, 


I have had a bit of a tiff with my housemate recently.  I live with my daughter and we get on very well most of the time although we usually find something trivial to disagree about every now and then. 


We are both pensioners but my days of having achieved that status are well established, while she has relatively recently entered the realms of ‘pensionership’.  At the ripe old age of… (let’s just say there is not long to go before I reach the start of my 8th decade), I don’t think that my life has slowed down altogether yet, but it has been interesting to see the ways that the pace of her life is gradually altering.  She won’t admit it publicly, but I have noticed that, when she orders something online these days she is not so eager to open it as soon as it arrives, or to stress if it does not arrive the next day.   


During more recent years we make more time for each other with joint shopping trips, combined projects and more involvement in each other’s lives.  While she has learned to take life a bit more slowly, she is always off doing something at a speed that I still can only keep up with by watching.   She does her best to make sure that I can keep up with her, she makes sure that the beginning of each day works a bit nearer to my pace.  Breakfast time at ours is later each day and has become more of a brunch most of the time.  She does make the time to make sure that there is more ‘we’ time that I can keep up with. 


I think that making the decision to not live alone has been good for both of us in different ways but, while she often tells me that the feeling is mutual, equally mutual are the many little things that I feel she could do to make the order of our shared accommodation even more organised.  When we decided to move in together, we both sold up and bought a home that is ours (as opposed to one that used to be either mine or hers), so neither of us can talk about what used to be where, and the household items have found their natural places.   


But nothing is perfect.  We each have items that one will put down in one logical place and that the other thinks most inappropriate. During the 6 years that we have shared our living space, she still takes issue with the placement of my collection of walking sticks.  I prop them up by the front door and they nearly always fall over as she rushes past them, while I cannot explain my  
annoyance when I want to get to the garden and can never find the key to the back door which she nearly always forgets to put back on its hook when she uses it. 


I would not swap most of the little inconveniences for having her with me.   But there is however one ongoing bone of contention and that is how to treat the dishes.  I have always been a believer of washing, drying, and putting away the dirty ones after every meal, or as soon as they materialise, while she will leave them on the draining board or even unwashed in the kitchen sink.   


We have talked about it at length, and I think she tries, but nothing changes and there are things that you need to keep to yourself ‘for peace sake’, but I was talking about my annoyance with a friend recently.  She lives with her son and his wife.   They have a dish washer but she tells me that the only difference is that the machine has nearly always got an unwashed version of the item of cutlery, cup, dish or plate she is looking for in it.  The conversation revealed that we are not only very grateful pensioners and grandmothers, we are also very old mums who each spend a disproportionate amount of time washing up on a day to day base. 


There was always something special about going into a kitchen where everything was in its place before starting to prepare breakfast, dinner or supper for us older people, or even if you are looking for a quick mid-morning cupper, but we learn to adapt.    


I know that both I and the friend who I shared that conversation with, would be living alone but for the company of our ‘always-in-a-rush, children and those that have them must count ourselves lucky because I have so many friends who now live alone and there is something very special about going to bed at night in the knowledge that if there is a bit of a crises, you have someone to call but, I wonder if other readers find themselves with a similar dirty dish dilemma. 


I think that the point of my message has to be one for those younger pensioners and pre-pensioners who double as live-in kids.  On behalf of all the parents who find this bit of negligence annoying, can I ask the younger ones to be a little more ‘dirty-‘dish’ aware?  


KE, Deptford