Not too long ago, I was washing Emilio’s formula bottles and realized that I had unconsciously formed a little Bottlehenge in the sink, with all the bottles placed in a circle around the drain with their bent necks turned inward. The sight gave me occasion to reflect on my systematic dish-washing habits (I actually count the number of times I flush the scrubber up and down inside each soap-and-water-filled bottle) and I thought it might be interesting to hear about the dish-washing habits of those who read this blog.Yes, I really did.
And so, by way of eliciting reflections from some of you on this fascinating subject (little everyday habits say a lot about a person, don’t they?), here are my dishwashing secrets:
I don’t know anybody who enjoys washing dishes—and Mari and I often leave dishes stacked up in the sink too long—but Mari and I have found that we don’t love washing dishes for different reasons. Mari doesn’t like washing the nipples of the bottles or washing silverware, for example, and she hates putting away dry dishes. I suspect she finds washing a bunch of little things (or putting them away) to be tedious. I, on the other, dislike tedium a lot less than I dislike greasiness,
so I would much rather wash a bunch of small items than wash anything that might leave some kind of residue on my hands. Consequently, I have not adopted my mother’s practice of filling up one side of the sink with water and letting the dishes soak there, because I don’t want to put my hands into greasy/soapy dish water. Unfortunately, I waste a lot of water when I wash dishes. This is not something I’m proud of, but it is an indulgence I allow myself as a reward for doing dishes in the first place. I avoid using dishes at all, if I can help it, in order to avoid washing dishes. One of the reasons, I don’t cook more often is because I don’t like to wash dishes. Mari and I used to argue a lot about whose turn it was to wash dishes, but then we came up with (OK, I came up with) a marble-counting system in which each of us dropped a marble in a designated coffee mug for every five minutes they spent washing dishes. Since Emilio was born, we have abandoned this practice; I don’t know why. Mari washes more dishes than I do in a five-minute span, but I am much more systematic about stacking items on our dish-drying rack and can generally fit more dishes there than Mari can. When I wash Emilio’s bottle paraphernalia, I tend to line up all the liners and nipples, and tops and bottoms in neat little rows. One of my pet peeves is wet glasses that have been placed open-end down to dry. In my experience, this traps the moisture inside the glass and it smells bad later.
21 comments:
Queridos míos, de la época en que trabajaba como lavaplatos aprendí que lo mejor es tener un lavavajillas, piénselo para el futuro, hay unos pequeñitos donde podrían lavarse todos los platos, vasos, tazas, biberones, cucharas, cucharillas, ollas y ollitas de Emilio. Mientras llega ese momento pueden usar guantes para no meter las manos en el agua grasienta.
My soultion for you both is to get a dishwasher as soon as possible. J. L.
I enjoyed this post. I don't generally like using a dishwasher, although I am forced to use it because Gene puts the dishes in and they have to eventually be washed. The reason is that I don't know of any dishwasher that effectively gets all the food off if you don't rinse first. So, here's the deal - You carry the dishes to the sink and rinse them - it's a lot more efficient to rinse them all before putting them in the washer, then you place them in the dishwasher (there are always things that can't be washed in the DW), then you wait for the dishwasher to fill (and you always need something that's waiting to be washed), then you add detergent and turn it on, then you wait for it to finish and the dishes to cool, then you take them out and put them away. So how many times does that amount to handling the dishes? It seems like a lot. I never washed baby bottles, including Haley's, in the dishwasher, and although I don't remember counting the times I scrubbed with the brush, I was very systematic about it, and it always gave me a sense of pleasure to see them all clean and ready. Since the trip to Mexico when Jen was a toddler, I have always washed my dishes in one side of the sink, using a bowl to hold the dishwater and rinse in the same side of the sink. I am very obsessive about CLEAN (and just not clean but looking clean) dish cloths and dish towels and sinks. I tell Gene that it's all right if he uses one of my dish towels on his hands if it's all right for me to buy another to replace it. My friend Babs is more compulsive than I. She gets a white, white cloth and dish towel to start every day.
Welp, If at all possible I will do something else besides washing dishes. It seems like a waste of time to me.
When I am alone and off running amuck, say in Mexico, I buy a truck load of beanie wennies and viena suasage (lip, ears and eyeballs) with the easy open lids and eat it cold. Or I buy the weight reducing drinks and drink them warm. Sometimes I eat cereal in a paper bowl with a plastic spoon. Sometimes I eat cereal dry.
I boil coffee (we call it cowboy coffee) and don't wash the pan.
So, the best way to live is to eat out of cans and use paper cups, bowls, plates and forks. All you have to do is throw the cans in the trash and the paper goods in the fire place.
If I run low, I improvise. Like if I need a bowl or a glass, I cut a milk carton in half. Works great. Also, I carry a fold-up metal fork and military can opener in my pocket. When I finish my beans then I lick off the fork, wipe it on my shirt and put it back in my pocket.
I sometimes cook corn and meat like the indigenous people, directly on the fire coals, turning them with my fingers as needed. Also, keep a lot of cardboard around. It is great for a plate and when you are through, throw it in the fire place.
Try to get some things that are delicious and lasting, like dried fruit and jerky. It will last a long long time and mixed with canned milk is very good for you.
You can even heat canned items by laying them on your automobile manifold. Lots of times you can leave your cans on the roof or on the porch to warm up. Camping food or back packing food is too expensive so buy beans and tuna.
I try never to eat sugar or salt. It complicates things and spoils you to taste.
I reckon you could say I eat to live, and make it as simple as possible.
...and to continue J.L.'s point: if you are running low on bread, please remember there's always cake.
Whatever happened to "You wash, I'll dry"?
One of the best things about our recent move is that we threw away the mildew-y, moldy piece of plastic that served as our drying rack. We are fortunate to now have a dishwasher. There will still be some hand-washing, but we plan to dry those items with a towel. I won't miss the delicate balancing act or the nastiness of the old drying rack.
C.B. wins the prize for the "most concise, to-the-point comments!" I might win for the "most wordy."
When we were first married, I cooked and Gary cleaned the kitchen. Now, 14 years later, I cook AND I clean the kitchen. I think that happened when he started giving the boys their bath while I cleaned. We have always been lucky enough to have a dishwasher, but as pointed out before, there are things that do better hand-washed. We do at least dislike the opposite things about the dishwasher. I dislike unloading it and Gary dislikes loading it. At least we've come to that compromise. I'm slowing grooming the boys to take over our chores. For some strange reason, and not through my DNA, they both like cleaning the toilets and mopping. God bless those children!
As for me and mine, the general theory is that I am the guy responsible for doing the dishes. I am fine with that, as I don't mind doing them. The problem with that is I also don't mind letting them sit for a while before they get done. This does not go over so well in other quarters of the house, and periodically results in the dishes being done by somebody else. We use the dishwasher, but I pretty much clean everything before I put it in the dishwasher, which, according to my sister, citing Consumer Reports, actually prevents the dishwasher from cleaning thouroughly. As for drying glasses, I always put them down, though I guess they are usually on something that tilts them a little, so that they don't sit there with water in them.
Algunas personas no creen que astronautas llegaron a la luna en ’69. Otros creen que extraterrestres construyeron a Stonehenge. Y otros creen que fue el mismo gobierno norteamericano que voló a las torres gemelas el 11 de septiembre. Yo no soy una de esas personas (aunque confieso que las imagénes del avion que estalló contra el Pentágono son muy curiosas). Pero sí soy una de las personas que no cree en la utilidad de los lavaplatos. Siempre me ha parecido que si metes un plato sucio en el lavaplatos, va a salir sucio despues. ¿Si tenés que lavar el plato antes de ponerlo en la maquina, que uso tiene la maquina? Tenemos un lavaplatos en nuestra casa que nunca hemos usado.
Wow. Thanks to everyone who has responded on this very important issue.
Some responses:
I share your suspicions of dishwashers, Ruth. We actually have a dish washer in our Foster Home, but it in our six years in this house, we’ve never used it a single time! Mari thinks we should, to which I say: "go for it." (I don't want to try to figure it out myself).
I can’t stand stinky dish-washing cloths and scrubbers, but I love the scrubbers we have that store the dishwashing liquid in the handle.
I’m all for reducing dish use, but am not ready to go True Confessions with you on the Web, Gene. I’ll just say this: some of my best friends are paper towels.
In my experience, unless you are in desperate need of dishes or of space to store them (big family dilemmas?), “You wash, I’ll dry” is a waste of time because dishes dry themselves.
I love to hear about the cleaning (and reading) habits you and Gary are instilling in your boys, Amy. You’re an inspiration. Keep up the good work!
Down with mildewy drying racks! I suspect that our silverware-drying station is approaching retirement age.
I’d like to hear more about what Consumer Reports has to say about using dishwashers effectively . . .
What they told me was that the dishwasher needed the little bits of food to scrape off other stuff. Or something like tht.
Down with machine dishwashers! I have never seen one that does not leave blobs of food somewhere. There was a time when I thought that washing/rinsing in cold water was anathema. Then I read somewhere that, if the water isn't boiling, it doesn't matter how hot or cold it is. My wife once told me that hot water dries faster. We don't use a drying rack. We use a towel on the kitchen counter. As a temporary move when a washer gets ahead of her/his dryer, this is OK. But leaving dishes to dry thereon (especially a second or third time on the same towel) leaves a delightful scent of mildew on every surface touching the towel. But it is so convenient! And you don't have to be cramped, constrained, or confounded by the confusing arrangement of drying racks! And, by the way, can anyone tell me what soap actually does to/for dishes?
The water I waste at the sink (and by the duration of my showers) is more than accounted for by the infrequency of the latter.
DA SMELL
DA, I don't know what soap does for the dishes. I can say from living with indigenous peoples of Mexico, they don't use soap. They just rinse the dishes in a pot of plain water or in the river. Well the pot of clear water is not very clear most of the time, but they seem to get along fine. My Mexican adopted Father and Mother are over 80 years old, and lived under a tree for many years.
The only thing that bothers me is that they don't have screens, sometimes don't have windows or doors and ignore flies. Flies are crawling all over everything, inside and outside.
Once Magi and I were stranded in the Sierra Madres and had to eat what the indigenous people had to give us. One time I got a bowl of bean soup. It had three beans in it. The next day I got one tortilla with four little pieces (about the size of the end of your little finger) of potato inside. The next day we got a spoon of goat cheese. In between we climbed wild trees and ate green mangos.
That was the time we had a midnight ceremony on the top of a tall mountain and I thought they were going to kill us but I think they made us honorary members of their indigenous family. There were a lot of people there, perhaps a hundred, and Magi and I stood before a VIP and he stood before a large handmade pyramid of rocks.
Magi said he didn't know what it was about because he couldn't understand their language.
When the ceremony was over No food was served but some shot off their pistols into the ground, which surprised me because when a Texan celebrates he avoids ricochettes by shooting in the air. It was a little invigorating becuase the mountain top was rocky as hell and the bullets were ricochetting all over the place. Everyboy laughed and had a good time. I think I was the only Texan some of them had ever seen.
Oh, I must continue this sad tale of woe of Gene and Romeo (Magi). I was up in a Wild mango tree. One foot was on a limb, the other in a fork of the tree. My left arm was around a limb and I was eating a mango with my left hand. Suddenly I realized that my right hand was scratching my right underarm (armpit). I quickly quit, thankful that Magi hadn't seen me. If'n ye are out in the badlands for a week or so w/o a bath and sleeping in indigenous handmade cots with bedbugs and lice, it is not unusual for you to scratch once in awhile, even where the sun doesn't shine.
Oh, my God! I think the loco's last comment (perhaps all of his comments on this post) is the most ridiculous, ludicrous thing I have ever heard. I yelled at him about it, saying, "Good God, Gene, you make our Mexican friends sound filthy and germed beyond words!" I have ridden around in the back of a pickup truck, on a hot day, with a bunch of Mexican men through the streets of Cd. Obregon, have shared meals with their families, and spent LOTS of time with these self-same families. I have NEVER smelled B.O. on ANY of them, even after they have been working hard (I don't know why not?). Gene has an extradorinary compulsion for exaggeration!
consider me thoroughly admonishedd.
Now you know who the boss is around here. Wuppps, have to go, the Master is calling.
OK, I'm back. I had to go wash the dishes and mop the floor. What Ruth really said was:(*&&^#%^&*(*&_&+**^&*%$%^#%*()(+_*&(&)*%^&
But she didn't need to humble me so. *My humality is only exceeded by my charm and good looks.*"
*Twain
I just re-read these comments and realize I "sounded" mean. Gene and I were both laughing a lot as I wrote them and having a great time...
Ruth is right. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body and has always treated me with kindness and love and respect and I'm sure if the chips were down she would go to the "wall" with me. We both dread the time when we will hold hands for the very last time.
As I once said, my first girlfriend in highschool ran off and got married. After that I picked out the nicest girl in high school and dated her, Ruth. If someone hit on her I beat them up.
So, now we have had 50 happy years and counting.
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