“Tell me how you wash a plate, and I will tell you who you are.”
I bought into the notion long ago that doing the dishes can be a mindful respite (a meditation, even), much as cooking can be.
But the ORDER? I had not thought much about the order, but of course realized while reading this that I have “a method” . (I disagree with her that delicates go last, I leave the heaviest stuff till the end, far away from the sink until everything lighter is done.)
And yes, please don’t spread chilli oil or other oily things over everything that didn’t start out oily!
You know there’s a whole method to your dishwasher stacking process too, right?
A dear friend (who I stayed with once long ago when I had no heat in mid winter) would empty out the dishwasher if his wife or I (or his mom, when she visited) had helpfully loaded it before he got to it, because he had a very specific method that he believed maximized the space and the efficiency of cleaning.
My sister will also rearrange the dishes when she thinks I won’t notice (but I can hear her doing it, and it drives me absolutely batty because her ocd about it is just wrong.
And then, of course, there is the method of emptying it. Top first or bottom? Silverware first or last?
We all have our way, whether we realize it or not.
If I’m the one who has put the dishes in the sink, I enjoy washing them. If, OTOH, everybody else has haphazardly and randomly just dumped dirty dishes in the sink, expecting somebody else to wash them, it pisses me off, especially if the counter adjacent to the sink is similarly haphazardly and randomly stacked with dirty dishes. I have an order to how I wash dishes, and it’s based on how I arrange them to air dry (I don’t like drying by hand, nor do I like putting stuff away, so either Mrs. ricepad dries and puts stuff away, or they air dry and then she puts them away), and that air-drying order informs the order things get washed. Washing dishes is a zen experience for me. You don’t like how I wash dishes? Fine, you can do them instead.
Then again, I enjoy grocery shopping, too. For my last birthday, someone asked if I had plans. “I’m going grocery shopping!,” I announced, without a trace of sarcasm or irony. I loved every minute.
I love grocery shopping almost anywhere, and discovering stores new to me (I became a huge fan of Sprout’s while in Philly last year. Exploring stores in other countries is part of the fun experience traveling
I love grocery shopping too. I told my mom yesterday that I went for a long walk to clear my head from work. She paused, then asked, that’s all? And then I went to the grocery store. She chuckled and said, I thought that you would have done that also, to relax. Lol.
For me, it’s part of visiting any new place, too. I couldn’t leave Hong Kong last year until I had explored a grocery store!
My SIL absolutely abhors going into a store – does all her shopping online. I think she has ptsd from childhood, her mom is an overthinker and bargain hunter so grocery shopping must have taken forever. She also hates doing dishes (same childhood ptsd reason i assume), dumps them any which way into the dishwasher (several have to be washed again), and the sink is always a royal pile-up. But she deals with both 75% of the time, so in my book she gets to do it whichever way works for her.
I’m with you on hand drying, I’d always rather wash than dry. My late uncle (with whom I probably washed / dried more dishes by hand than anyone else) found it zen like you, I think. He would indulge me “helping” him only as a way to spend time together, I realized long after he was gone. We could have a little chat without anyone else around, and it was when he shared his ideas and opinions and jokes the most (it’s a very chatty family, and he was the quiet one).
We had a ratty old-but-functional dishwasher in our house that we only ever used for dinner parties or larger gatherings — that is, until my sis visited and shamed us into buying a new one. Yeah, she actually started pontificating about the enormous waste of water doing dishes by hand, and she likes telling people how they can be as virtuous a human being as she is
Long gone are the days when she was a kid & read books to our dad while he was doing the dishes after their (and our occasional) dinners together.
Having said that, we never looked back & use the dishwasher all the flipping time. We love it.
I still can’t wrap my head around my PIC’s habit of parking dirty dishes and silverware in the sink instead of putting them directly into the dishwasher… but I’m also the one who rearranges whatever random ‘order’ he deemed fitting
I almost love washing dishes. Instant gratification. Making order out of chaos. I rinse stuff going into the dishwasher (I know, I know) and handwash knives and antique/delicate pieces, placing them to air-dry on the right hand side of the sink area. I fill stubbornly encrusted pots/pans with detergent water, place them back on the stove and let them soak until morning when they will come clean with just a wipe or so.
No one else in the household loads the dishwasher
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
11
If anyone who buses dishes doesn’t do some triage along the way, they were raised by wolves. If someone does sort, order and stack just a few things, it makes a huge difference. Sainthood is reserved for those who pitch in until the job is done.
I get what you’re saying, and I’m not arguing. OTOH, I married her (and perhaps a more important distinction: she married ME), so here we are. She does have so many other amazing qualities.
In my home I have come to think of that first dish as a "nidus of infection", after which everyone seems to think they might as well add to the cyst, rather than put dishes in the dishwasher just a few inches to the right.
In our tiny kitchen, there’s less than 1m between the sink (to the right) and the dishwasher (to the left). It’s mystifying. He’s also one of them thar pre-rinsers when he actually puts the dishes in the dishwasher. Wrongly
I never realized until just now that the reason my cousin’s dishwasher is “oddly” to the left of the sink is that both he and his wife are…. left handed.
The underlying reason is likely the kitchen can accommodate an ambidextrous choice of placing the appliance. Speaking of which, we know a household with sufficient space to go leftorright -handed location. They chose both to flank the sink and equipped the two machines with magnetically-attached signs that switch places as appropriate: “Clean” and “Dirty”. So, most of the time, there’s nothing in the sink and everything is put away.
. (I disagree with her that delicates go last, I leave the heaviest stuff till the end, far away from the sink until everything lighter is done.)
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