Time machine
I have discovered a way to manufacture more time in the evenings - do the dishes more often. I don't know how this is possible, but it's true. I have struggled with regular dish washing for the entire course of my 7 year marriage. Some weeks go by when we're struggling to find a clean fork or knife or we have to actually wash a cup in order to have a clean one to get a drink of water from. To many people (including my mother) this is disgusting. I can't say that I like it either, but it's a real struggle for me.
Since having children and staying home to care for them I can't say that I've improved. I'm generally actually quite conscious of health standards around the home - I don't like that yucky ring that can appear around the bathtub or toilet bowl so I clean often enough that it doesn't appear. I vacuum at least once a week (most of the time) and sometimes a few times a week and even wash the windows a few times a year. But dishes, they're my nemesis.
Fast forward to the last week: I realised that washing the dishes is very important to our household functioning properly. When I wake up to a clean kitchen I'm more likely to say YES when my oldest daughter asks to make cookies. This makes her a happy little girl and gives us some fun time together. When the kitchen is clean it makes breakfast a much nicer event because I'll be happier making waffles for breakfast instead of just schlepping some cereal into a bowl. But more importantly, I think it really makes my husband happy to have a clean kitchen. I don't remember asking him this specifically, but I have a feeling it's true. He tells me that he reads my blog so I'll see what he says :)
But on to my original statement about washing dishes creating more time... For the last week I have been making a concerted effort to wash ALL the dishes in the evening before I go to bed. NOTE: I don't have a dishwasher. Some days I haven't succeeded, there might be a pot or a dish left (or several). But the last 2-3 days I have washed every single dish before going to bed. And one night I even mopped the floor too! When I wake up to a clean kitchen, it means I want to wash the breakfast dishes straight away so that the kitchen stays clean. Then after lunch I wash again. What this means is that after dinner there are only a few dishes to wash and I get them done while my husband bathes the kids. So by the time that the kids are in bed, I've finished cleaning up and I have all this time on my hands! So I've been doing great things like reading books, catching up on my blog reading, spending time with my husband, sorting things to sell. It's amazing! It makes me wonder how in the world I wasted all my time before.
So I'm nearly 30 and I've learned that washing the dishes is a good thing. I think I knew this before somewhere in my head but perhaps didn't want to be 'tied down' to some kind of schedule or something equally ridiculous. I wonder what else I'll learn in the coming weeks and months? Perhaps dusting isn't so bad after all, eh?
posted by MicheleinNZ @ 12/20/2006 07:53:00 PM
2 Comments:
Oh man this sounds all too familiar! I used to be the same way, I hated the dishes. Now my nemesis is the laundry!!
We don't have a dish washer either. I wash our dishes at least twice a day. I found that the more often you do them during the day the less time you actually spend doing them if you wait a day...or two. And you're so right, when the kitchen is clean and the dishes are done it gives you more energy and you want to make cookies and food. But when the dishes are piling up (like mine are right now because we made brownies last night and I didn't wash up and now the breakfast dishes are in there, so I have some work to do after this long rambling comment!) even when the rest of the house is clean it makes the entire place feel like a dungeon!
That's the thing - I don't understand how doing them more often means you actually spend less total time washing dishes. The only thing I can think of is that you do a lot less scrubbing.
Another key thing is that our kitchen is the first thing people see of our house because we use our back door as the main entrance. If it's messed up with dishes it doesn't matter what the rest of the house looks like because this is the first impression. As I'm focussing on improving hospitality, this has got to be sorted out. The house doesn't have to be perfect but I want it to be welcoming.
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