It’s A Dirty Job, And I Shouldn’t Have To Do It

It’s the 21st Century. Humanity has reached for the stars, but mostly fallen short. Instead, it has a succeed in just making messy jobs easier. 

This isn’t a short story post. At the start of summer 2020, I uncovered our barbecue and opened it up to a greasy, yucky mess. When I wrapped it up for the winter as the weather got cooler in 2019, I gave the grates a rubdown, blasted everything with a high heat for ten minutes and left it at that. Anything else would be a problem for “future me”. 

Future me of summer 2020 hated past me of winter 2019. I pulled out the grates and spent literally hours with multipurpose cleaner and dishsoap and steel wool scrubbing them top and bottom. I destroyed our plastic washbasin. I sweated and slaved to bring it back to not disgusting. 

Never again, I swore. Never again. 

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that in the winter of 2020, I rubbed down the grates with some bunched up tin foil, blasted everything with a high heat and wrapped everything up for the season.  

As the weather warmed earlier this year, I looked toward the covered and wrapped barbecue and despaired. I really didn’t want to open it. 

But I had a plan. 

In the previous months my wonderful wife had started buying glasswear from thrift stores and restoring them, including a glass oven dish that was filthy with grease. She used oven cleaner to bring it back to a shiny, like-new condition. 

I sprayed it all over the grates and let it sit for a while, and the grease just rubbed off with, honestly, zero effort.

I finally got around to putting away the barbecue for the season yesterday, thanks to my Post-It note tasks system. Before wrapping everything up, I pulled the grates, sprayed them thoroughly with the oven cleaner and wiped them clean once it had done its thing. It felt good to close up a nice clean barbecue. 

Future me is going to be so proud of future past me. Present me is feeling pretty good right now too.