There is a white sink in my kitchen. I do not have a "stainless" steel sink because I got sick of all stains and marks and the fact that prior "stainless" steel sinks always looked like they should be in a tenement built in 1878. This is the same reason that I would never have any appliance in my kitchen that has a "stainless" steel surface - they're unsightly about 99.44% of the time.

Anyway, I really didn't mean to get off on a rant about "stainless" steel, but it was just too tempting. The white sink is Corian®. It's nicely meshed with the counter so that there is no lip around the sink - you can just brush crumbs and other debris right into it. (You may notice a slightly obsessive/compulsive bent to my housekeeping style, which would be mostly accurate.) What the marketers at DuPont fail to disclose is that Corian is a seriously porous material (not quite Bounty® paper towels, but close) that stains easily, especially when subjected to a constant barrage of coffee, tea, Coke, grape jelly, spaghetti sauce, etc.

In order to keep the sink a shade that is closer to eggshell than, oh say, the underside of a mushroom, it requires daily scrubbing with Soft Scrub®. Not just the wimp-ass lemony scented faux Soft Scrub that is the milquetoast bastard brother of the authentic, muscular Soft Scrub WITH BLEACH. Bleach is the only cleaning fluid that will keep the Corian sparkling. I tend to clean the sink every time I wash dishes, which may be multiple times in one day (washing dishes is almost as therapeutic as doing laundry; grocery shopping, on the other hand, creates the need for therapy).

In the past almost-five years of living in this house with the white Corian sink, I have ruined upwards of a dozen articles of clothing. These sweaters and dresses and tops and t-shirts and nightgowns all bear the mark of the careless use of Soft Scrub WITH BLEACH. They have rosettes and sprinkles and swipes and random patterns of bleached-out whiteness, all in plain view, rendering them unwearable except for cleaning the litter boxes. You would think that I would have learned how dangerous the Soft Srub is, that it can migrate off my Platex® Living® Gloves in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics, no matter how careful I am. You would be wrong.

This morning I did a quick sinkful of dishes wearing a sage green dress that I've had for years and which is comfortable, sufficiently "business casual" to be wearable for work, and matches many different sweaters. It was not until lunch that I noticed the small speck of paleness in the middle of the skirt. Sigh. Why has no one invented a reverse bleach yet that will restore the original color? Why is there no little pen or paint bucket like in Microsoft® Paint with which I can pick up the color of the dress and deposit it in the bleach zone? What's the good of technology if I can't use it to clean up my messes?