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Frugality, the Child of Necessity

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Drat! They no longer make this handy over-the-sink dish rack, something I’ve used every day since I bought it six or eight years ago.

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This has been one of the most convenient and frequently used gadgets in the kitchen. It holds any number of little pieces of junk, keeps them out of the way and out of the left-hand sink, and often serves as de facto storage.

Over time, though, it’s begun to wear out. The rubbery plastic coating has eroded away along a series of small joints:

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The wire underneath it is rusting and eventually will break. {sob!} That’s because I do this to it:

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Every time I use one of my good kitchen knives, I wash it and drop it to dry into one of those handy-dandy slots along the side of the thing. Evidently, this has not been good for it! Not very good for my knives anymore, either.

dis drainer31ronroWeELThanks to the cleanliness & tidiness kick, I thought the mini-drainer should be replaced. Lo these many years ago, I bought it either at Albertson’s or Linens ‘n’ Things. The Albertson’s no longer carries its old array of products like this, and Linens ‘n’ Things went out of business years ago (actually, its spirit haunts the ether in the form of an online store). Bed, Bath, & Beyond, now the only game in town in the freestanding brick-and-mortar household miscellany department, doesn’t carry this object. Neither does Target. Neither does Home Depot. Neither does Lowe’s. Neither does Amazon. The latter has a flimsier thing that’s wider and will take up too much space out of the rest of the sink, which I use to drain larger items, and one that’s allegedly stainless but, as we know, “stainless steel” made in China means “rusty steel.” Neither the size nor the cheesiness will meet my needs.

What to do about this conundrum?

Well, I remembered having heard, some years ago, about a product people can paint on dishwasher racks when the rubbery stuff wears off of those. My dishwasher has solid nylon racks, so that annoyance is a thing of the past. But what’s happening to the little over-the-sink dish drainer is comparable, eh? So when I passed a Home Depot yesterday, I darted in and found this:

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It was in the dishwasher department, not in Hardware, interestingly enough. We’ll see if it works.

Probably will take all day to apply the stuff. You have to paint on “multiple” coats. Damn, but I wish people would quit using that irritating bit of jargon! “Multiple”: many? a few? a couple? Say what you mean!!!!

What? Oh.

Anyway, you paint it on, wait a half hour, and then apply another coat. Unless it’s radically goopy, I think I’d like to apply three, four, maybe even five coats — try to fill it in the worn-off spots to where the surface comes back up and blends into the undamaged white coating. At a half-hour per coat, it could take two or three hours to accomplish that. Then you have to wait 24 hours before you can use the repaired rack.

I was going to title this post, cutely, “Necessity, the Child of Frugality.” But that’s not really the case. It’s not that I’m too cheap to replace the rack with a new one. If an adequate rack were still being manufactured, I’d buy it in an instant. I do have better things to do with my time than play with goop that emanates toxic fumes. But the truth is, as formerly quality products are being replaced with flimsy, second-rate junk produced overseas factories with minimal quality control, consumers have to try to extract as much life from their old, better-quality products as possible. Amid all this illusory plenty, we have to make it do and make it last.

Once this thing wears out, I guess, the only option will be to buy a Rubbermaid drainboard-sized drainer and drop it in the bottom of that big sink. Which is going to be a nuisance…if I wanted one of those, I’d have one of those.

Sure would help if stuff were made in America.

P.S.: Hold the phone! Just found the thing on Amazon, about six pages in to the search. They want THIRTY DOLLARS for it!!!! I’m dead sure I didn’t pay that much for mine, because I wouldn’t have…too cheap. But there it is. “Eligible for free super save shipping.” Yeah. Well, it sure should be, at that price.

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13 thoughts on “Frugality, the Child of Necessity”

  1. … and so it goes, the slow death spiral of small manufacturing. Yes, yes, progress is what it is, moving on up the value chain, high-revenue services vs. the rust belt, and all that.
    But still…

  3. http://www.amazon.com/Better-Houseware-1423-Over-The-Sink-Stainless/dp/B0000DDZU2
    Just removed the ‘er’s” from Frugal Scholar’s link. $15.45 eligible for free shipping.
    $17.49 at target http://www.target.com/p/polder-stainless-steel-in-sink-dish-rack/-/A-10399085#prodSlot=medium_1_4&term=over+the+sink+dish+drainer and only $14.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond not including the 20% coupon that’s always out there
    http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=11785700

  4. You know, at Sears you can buy six (yeah, 6!) of the dingy-boggers I covet for $55. Let’s see…the one I have has lasted about 7 years, so six of them = a 42-year supply! Who could pass it up?

    Oh wait. I won’t be here in 42 years…

  5. I’ll be very curious if that stuff actually works – but if it’s anything like the paint that we used to refinish the rusted/stained bits of the shower floor at our duplex, you might want to consider a mask before using it. (Though the volume you’re using would be smaller than what we used.)
    My 75-yr-old FIL (who has COPD) started to use the stuff and actually stopped because it was so caustic on his lungs, which is amazing because he is the most stubborn person I have ever known.

  6. yeah-I found the Polder alsohttp://www.target.com/p/polder-stainless-steel-in-sink-dish-rack/-/A-10399085?reco=Rec|pdp|10399085|TargetClickEV|item_page.vertical_1&lnk=Rec|pdp|TargetClickEV|item_page.vertical_1

    and thishttp://www.walmart.com/ip/13330634?adid=22222222227000314318&wmlspartner=wlpa&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=&wl3=13687119790&wl4=&wl5=pla&veh=sem&adid=22222222227000314318&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=&wl3=13687119790&wl4=&wl5=pla&veh=sem

  7. The paint stuff works well on the little bits of rack in your dishwasher that the coating has flaked off.

    I prefer a tea towel spread out on the counter for drying the few dishes that don’t fit in my dishwasher.

    There are very few things that don’t fit or can’t go in my dishwasher. If it can’t go in the dishwasher it it isn’t allowed in my house.

    • @ Jane Savers: Yes, I like the tea towel strategy, too, when I’m actually forced to wash dishes by hand. Especially glasses!

      The Kohler double sink I put into this house came with a big rack that fits perfectly into the bottom of the sink, protecting the enamel from scratching when one sets pans to dry in there. That’s usually all I would wash by hand — something that has to be scoured. The little rack that stretches across the sink and rests as far toward the back as it will go has become de facto storage for things that I use every day. The paring knife and a steak knife get stuck in there (and that’s what I think has eroded the rubbery coating in the specific spots there), and so does the little basting brush I use to clean the coffee dust out of the coffee grinder every morning. The chef’s knife often resides there, too.

      LOL! I guess you could say it accommodates my laziness by sparing me the need to put everything away! 😀

    • Good grief! How did you find it? I looked at every Amazon page that came up in response to searches for “dish drainer” and “dish rack” but didn’t see that! Grrrrrr!

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