Jake & Diana are having a baby boy!
I just spent the last hour and a half washing dishes. Yes. A full ninety minutes…maybe more. I’m amazed that my fingers are even able to type right now as shriveled up as they are. There are a few things that contribute to the lengthiness of this particular household chore. Let me outline them for you:
1. Jake and I both hate washing dishes. So we always put it off. It’s like we think that if we just ignore them they’ll go away. It hasn’t worked yet, but we’re still acting in faith that one day it will.
2. I have this thing about not being wasteful. It causes me to eat food that I don’t like, use disposable items (e.g. paper towels, aluminum foil, etc.) more than once, and squeeze the life out of each toothpaste tube to get that very last little bit. All because I can’t stand the thought of wasting it. I feel like I’m throwing money in the trash when I do that. How does this relate to dishwashing, you ask? Well, it seems wasteful to me to fill up a sink with water and add the dish soap, only to wash just a few dishes. I figure if I wait till just a few more get dirty, then I can wash them all at once, making my hot water and soap more productive, and getting the most for my dish-soap-money. The only problem is, I employ this kind of thinking until the dishes get WAY out of hand. Not good.
3. We don’t have a dishwasher (you probably figured that by now). We never have. I’ve never really thought much about my dream house, but I guarantee you that it WILL have a dishwasher.
4. I’m a rinser. I can’t stand to have bits of food floating in the dish water, so I thoroughly rinse each dish before I begin washing. Normally this rinsing is done as soon as I finish using a dish and before I stack it next to the sink. I’ve even trained Jake to do the same. He knows better than to leave an unrinsed dish sitting by the sink only to have the food dry up on it. But sometimes, for whatever reason, a dish (or dishes) do not get sufficiently rinsed when they are placed by the sink, leaving the rinsing to be done right before I start the washing.
5. We have zero hot water pressure. Seriously. When our hot water is turned on all the way, the stream that trickles out is about HALF the diameter of a pencil. This means that the aforementioned rinsing takes far too long. This also means that our dishwashing process goes something like this: Turn on hot water. Walk away for about 10 minutes while the hot water actually makes its way from the water heater (downstairs and outside) to the sink. Come back. If water is finally hot, plug up the sink, add soap, walk away for another 10 to 15 minutes while the sink fills up…to about 1/3 fullness. Come back. Commence washing.
6. We have zero counter space, so our dish drain is pretty small. This means that I must wash, rinse, and stack dishes until it’s full; dry and put away all of those dishes; and then repeat until all of the dishes are clean.
Ugh….if you didn’t hate washing dishes before, you probably do now. But I can say that in my opinion one of the most beautiful and satisfying sights in all the world is a clean kitchen. *sigh of satisfaction* And I have one…at least for tonight.
You guys sound like we did/do until we got BJ’s dishwasher, and then bought our own. Of course we have one here, but dishes still pile up. Our pre-dishwasher problem came at the Flomaton house. The sink didn’t have original stoppers, and the ones from the store didn’t really work, so you washed for about 5-10 min, then had to add more water. It became a race to see how many dishes you could wash before you ran out of water!!! :)
I cannot believe how much it sounds like I wrote this. Seriously…we are very like-minded when it comes to dish washing. We have a dish washer, but I still have to rinse every speck of food off before I load dishes in there. I was joining you in a marathon washing night last night…even if it was from afar.
The only consoling words I have: One day you will look back and be able to laugh (even though there isn’t much laughing going on right now) Also, you will be able to bore your children with the “tragic” stories from the “old days”
[re=1261]Dave[/re]: Hey, ever heard of a ‘dishpan’?
I love comments. You people make me laugh. :-) I think that’s the true reason why I blog—in hopes of getting funny comments back.
[re=1265]Mama[/re]: Hey isn’t that the thing they leave under your bed in a hospital??? :)
I think Jake should buy you some very nice lotion for Valentines Day – your poor dish pan hands!!!!
i think you should cease with the whole fill up the sink thing. I use the sponge thingamajig that holds soap in the end of it and just run the water on the dish and soap comes out of the end of the sponge. Or you can use one of those brushes and put soap in it. I have used both. It’s faster? I think? Maybe?
I do feel your dishwashing pain though – once when we did that, I forgot there was a pan that I cooked hamburger helper in – the pan sat for week – yeah. I don’t even want to describe the smell to you! Brent washed the dishes that time and was gagging the whole time he washed that pan! It was the most disgusting thing EVER!!!