Are your dishes piling up in your sink?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

The world is in disarray. The economy is crumbling. The news is bleak. The kids are stir-crazy. The parents need a break. Everyone is tired of the vigilance needed to dodge the virus, which doesn’t tire.

And the sink, I am sorry to tell you, is full of dirty dishes. Again...

Dirty dishes are the least of all problems. The very least. And so easily fixed: soap, water, a little mindless scrubbing. Come to think of it, how dare we lament this simple chore in light of everything else. And how dare you nod in recognition!

Still, a sink perpetually brimming with dirty dishes is a proxy for all that is tedious and tiresome about life at the undramatic edges of this crisis. It is incessant, like the quarantine. Repetitive, like our days at home. Demanding and messy, like the tasks that fill those days. And somehow fraught with shame and judgment: Who can claim to have their act together if they can’t fit their Brita pitcher under the faucet?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-dishes-will-never-be-done/2020/05/19/e558ef5a-965e-11ea-9f5e-56d8239bf9ad_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

Link to tweet

[hlthe2b]

1. That might be the only thing not piling up...

I don't like to see dirty dishes hanging around, so I do them or put them in the dishwasher. Though with a shortage of the kind of dishwasher pods my machine needs, I only run it once or at most twice a week, handwashing in between.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I never let that happen

I like keeping up with that particular task, following the advice of a sage who told me, 'no husband was ever stabbed in the back while doing the dishes.'

[lunatica]

16. LOL!

[liberalmuse]

3. I'm an avid dish washer.

I have to do dishes in the middle of cooking and cannot have a dirty dish in the sink. I haven't used my dishwasher in years. I'd like to now, but am afraid to turn it on out of fear seals have aged and broken.

[stopbush]

6. Dishwashers are much more eco friendly than hand washing.

Much more.

[liberalmuse]

11. Yeah, that is why I want to use it again.

But am afraid to run it after several years.

[Laelth]

4. I think it's called depression.

I admit that my sink is not empty.

-Laelth

[empedocles]

5. With 5 in this house, I run the dishwasher everynight.

All 5 pitch in, pulling on the oars. House is nowhere as clean as it once was. Needs a deep cleaning, and no end in sight.

[Charming to see the 4 yr old . . . 'helping'].

[MANative]

7. Grateful to have a dishwasher, which is running daily

Used to run it every 2-3 days. Pots and pans... they sometimes wait for a few hours. Our routines have definitely been disrupted and revised. If it weren't for my home office on a separate floor, I'd be tearing my hair out over many of these "adjustments."

[PJMcK]

8. Not in our kitchen

My ex-wife always made her feelings clear if I left dishes in the kitchen sink. After 20+ years, I was trained!

The Landlady(!), who is my "new" wife, loves that I clean the kitchen after use. We have a simple arrangement: if she cooks then I clean and vice versa.

Strangely, we don't use our dishwashers very often! It just seems wasteful since we generally don't make a lot of dirty dishes.

[Runningdawg]

9. As of Sunday they are

I have asked him to unload the dishwasher a dozen times over the last 5 weeks. He NEVER does. So he can wash whatever dishes he needs to cook for himself for a while. I need a break.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Mine tend to anyhow, even under normal circumstances,

because I'm a slob and there's nobody else in the house to nag me about it. I do have a limit, though, usually at the point where I run out of forks, and eventually I'll fill and run the dishwasher. I've never had to eat Hamburger Helper out of a gravy boat with a melon baller, for example.

[Kaleva]

12. I enjoy a clean, tidy house so washing dishes doesn't bother me.

[Skittles]

13. no

that sounds bizarre to me

[Midnight Writer]

14. Bachelor hint. Own one plate, one cup, one knife, fork, spoon, etcetera. You gotta keep'm clean.

[ailsagirl]

15. I try to stay on top of it

But you know what they say about good intentions!

[csziggy]

17. They were yesterday! OUr dishwasher quit

It seems some air vent is not opening so the dishwasher won't run. I unloaded the dirty dishes yesterday, cleaned off the dishracks in it, and hand washed all the dishes. Since we have no counter space to dry them, I used the dishracks in the dishwater to let them dry.

Now I remember why I have always owned a dishwasher - though my husband is usually my hand washer for cooking stuff - our deal is, I cook and he cleans up afterwards - but he had stuff to do in the morning and nothing would have gotten cleaned until much later in the day. He was happy that he just had to wait for everything to dry and put it all away.

Oh - replacement part is on the way. When it gets here the repairman will come, pull the dishwasher out of it's slot, replace the part and see if that fixed it. If that doesn't do it, we'll need a new control panel.

[LeftInTX]

18. I have too much junk in my kitchen

It's driving me nuts. Overbuying of this and that for this stupid pandemic!

I wanna give some of it to Goodwill