Irrelevant Tip

My husband and I still live in the stone age. I hand wash all our dishes. Yes, I stand at the sink and hand wash all our dishes from the day. Sometimes several times a day and sometimes I wait a day or two until I do them. We have a dishwasher, actually a fairly new dishwasher that came with the house, but we don't use it. We aren't morally against using the dishwasher, we just don't have enough dishes, especially bowls, to justify using the dishwasher. We can't fill it up fast enough without running out of bowls. While some people may reason to go buy more bowls, we haven't and don't plan on it. We don't need more bowls. We just need to wash the ones we have already.

So I am the human dishwasher. It doesn't hurt that I don't mind washing dishes. It is kind of therapeutic for me knowing that something is getting clean and seeing the product of my efforts.

Anyway, I'm writing about doing dishes because I wanted to share a tip that my neighbor unknowingly shared with me when we were discussing the fact that I don't use my dishwasher. She shared about how when she was a kid one of the chores she and her siblings shared was doing the dinner dishes. She hated when it was her turn because the kitchen was kind of closed off to the other main rooms in the house so she would miss out on whatever her family was doing after dinner. She said that her mom taught her how to wash the dishes most effectively thus cutting the amount of time she spent doing the dishes alone.

I like effective and efficient things, but to me the time it takes to think up the efficient way to do something makes the task not efficient. So I leave other people, like my husband, to think up the efficiency of a task and then willingly put their thoughts into action.

I realize that this tip will be pretty useless to about 90-95% of the population, but I thought I would share it anyway in case you ever do become the human dishwasher for a day or season in your life.

Here is an efficient tip if you are ever the human dishwasher in your home: If you have a lot of dishes, fill up your sink with soapy water. Then wash your least dirty dishes- glasses, cups, and silverware first. Then wash your somewhat dirty dishes- plates, bowls, serving bowls and plates. Lastly, wash your dirtiest dishes- pots and pans. This helps you wash the least dirty items with clean water and then by time you get to your pots and pans you don't care that the water will get super dirty because you will be done with dishes! This really does seem to help me when doing dishes because it makes me organized and that helps me go faster.

Also, another tip for laying your dishes to dry. I organize the dishes as I lay them to dry. I put all cups and glasses together, all silverware together, all plates and bowls together, all cooking utensils together, and all pots and pans together. I arrange it according to what goes in which cabinets or drawers that way when I go to put the dried dishes up I am putting away all the like items up at the same time. So I stack all my plates and bowls together because they are in the same cabinet. When I go to put them up when they are dry I only have to grab them and open up the cabinet once to put them away. Same with pots and pans and all the other dishes. It makes the clean up process SO much quicker because I'm not running around the kitchen opening and closing the same drawers and cabinets a ten times each.

I'm actually a little obsessive about stacking the dishes together while they dry (maybe its because I figured out the method on my own). My husband-the efficient one- teases me about my method, but I LOVE it and have to fight off frustration if the dishes aren't stacked together because it seems to make the put away process "longer". While, it does make it longer I know that its only maybe a minute longer and so not a big deal to most everyone.

Anyway, I was excited about finding what seemed to me a good method of doing dishes that I wanted to share it with you! Since I may be a little obsessed with the drying/organized method I took pictures (insert sheepishly nerdy smile.)