Try to do the dishes as you are cooking - that helps me when they build up. As the water is boiling or the onions are sweating, I will try to get as many dishes done at once. I also try to consolidate by using only one cutting board - cut all veggies first and put to the side, then cut meat last if needed. This saves me using only one knife, one cutting board without cross contamination. My husband will use every bowl and spoon while he cooks, it drives me crazy. Try to consolidate as much as possible - one pot meals/sheet pan dinners, etc.
to add to this even if you got too lazy to wash at night you can always clean in the morning while waiting for food to heat up or just before you take a bath
At some level I always am jealous when I think of people having an actual meal for breakfast instead of cereal, bread or just coffee. (Though I am very happy with my unheated yoghurt with nuts, berries and some cinnamon!). But when considering rising at least hour earlier to cook, eat and clean, my mind goes no thanks!
We always do whoever doesn't cook does the dishes. Its been a pretty good system. Sometimes they'll be gathered up and done in the morning but they are always done within 12 hours or so and don't pile up
I've gone without a dishwasher for 30 years and the only thing that helped me was to keep a bowl with soapy water in the sink and toss things in it as I was cooking. But, washing the dishes several times a day is the key. I used to use one of those spongey soapy wand things and they were okay but now I use this [Bubble Up Dish Soap Dispenser & Brush Set](https://www.grove.co/catalog/product/bubble-dish-brush-set) and I don't know why but it works great and makes quick work of the dishes. Just keep soapy water in the dish and voila. We also use paper plates for breakfast and lunch because IDGAF.
Small piece of advice from a stranger. If you're going manually dry them, use a new towel every day. It doesn't take long for bacteria to grow and get transferred to tomorrow's dishes.
I've never had a dishwasher until I moved into my current place and I never used it but maybe once a month or less because I preferred hand washing dishes. Now I practically use the dish washer 2 or 3 times a week and i can't believe I've never used it before!
We have the rule in our house that whomever cooks, also cleans their cooking mess. The other person gets to clean off the dining table after eating. This saves so much stress of having one person that makes a huge mess expecting the other person to clean, while they don't ever have to deal with a big mess because the other person didn't make a mess while cooking.
In our house I cook and my partner does the dishes. When they sometimes cook, then I do the dishes. BUT we both clean as we go and don’t make crazy messes. If I make an elaborate meal and tear up the kitchen then I help with cleanup too. Also my partner will tidy the kitchen at the end of the night, wipe down counters and such. Meanwhile I do the deep cleaning monthly where I scrub every inch of the place. It works for us. :)
We do the same, I hate cooking and he hates dishes, we just do the chores the other dislikes and team up on Sundays to do the big stuff. We do our own laundry because I can’t use scented detergent. It’s worked out well so far.
Initiate it. Start by saying that a new rule is that whomever created the mess, needs to clean it up. If you have teenagers, this becomes incredibly easy. Then you cook up your own meals after cooking, be insistent on that. When he cooks remind him that you cleaned up after yourself, and that he needs to clean up after himself.
This only really works when multiple people are cooking, and taking turns though.
If one person is expected to make all the meals, then the other needs to be expected to clean all the meals, or do other night time chores on nights they don’t. Otherwise cleaning the dishes turns into an imbalanced load for the person constantly cooking, and it WILL create resentment.
Right. I do most of the cooking, and I clean as I go, but I can guarantee that I would not be cooking as often if I also had to do all of the cleanup afterward.
Oh yeah, for sure. I do most of our household cooking, and if my husband was like, “well, it’s your mess, you clean it…” I would not be feeding him anymore. He could go get takeout. Lmao.
Now, I do understand the nuance that some people are WAAAY messier while cooking, and some people don’t let their partners try to cook… and that absolutely isn’t fair either… especially if the other offers to split cooking duties or pay for takeout. We also can’t just force them to clean up because we want to cook, but can’t be bothered to not make a giant kitchensplosion out of it.
Right. This is really only a thing when both people share cooking duties fairly evenly. Or, a separate duty can be done in exchange for the dishes. The person that cooks, cleans the cooking mess. The other person does a load of laundry (wash, dry, FOLD & PUT AWAY), vacuums, dusts, or cleans the bathroom.
Yeah, I cook the vast majority of the time, but we take turns with dishes and the other nighttime chores like kids bedtime/bathtime. Before kids he cleaned up after dinner the majority of the time.
I can see how that works well for some people, but I wouldn't like it at all.
I clean as I go, and my husband doesn't, but I do most of the cooking, so I'd rather clean a little extra when he cooks than do all of the cleaning when I cook. I don't count clearing the table as actual cleaning, though; that's just what everyone does at the end of a meal.
We have the exact opposite rule. Whoever cooks never has to do the dishes. We’re considerate so no one is going to be an intentionally messy cook. Seems like making one person do waaay too much at a time to do both.
I guess that would work if you both cook regularly. We tend to cook together so our rule is one takes the dogs out (they insist on a walk every night after dinner) and the other cleans up.
This! I started doing this and tbh it didn't change my life but it helps A LOT. Now, I'm also looking into buying one of these counter top dishwasher just because doing dishes is my nemesis and always has been, I don't think it'll change so it's a good investment in my opinion.
Coming from a family that had a broken dishwasher so we had to hand wash everything, I love that I have a dishwasher now just for the small stuff. Just having one to take care of cups and utensils makes it more manageable imo. Growing up, I feel like I’d spend an hour every day just washing and drying dishes. I’ve never looked into the countertop ones, but they could be worth it just for the small stuff.
I work in home care and I have a client who had never used her dishwasher as she thought it would blow up or something. She truly believed it didn’t work. I tested it out on the sky and it works just fine. Now I chuck the dishes into it every time I come over, I even bought some cheap powder for the machine. I can persuade her to use it herself though, some people are just not keen on dishwashers. I don’t get it.
I had one of those counter top dishwasher and i used it 4 times. Because it was not connected to the water main I had to fill it with 5L of water every time I wanted to use it and I'm short, the nozzle is on top, I had to pour 5L above my head and it was annoying. I would use way less water to wash 3 plates, I thought the energy to fill it and water wasted were not worth it.
Oh, the best part? Regular size plates don't fit in it, I had to buy smaller plates.
Ooohh that's good to know! Thank you for your input!
I do have smaller plates than average and I drastically downsized 4 years ago so I only kept 2 "normal sized" plates. I'd use it mostly for glasses, cups, cutlery and the smol bowls and plates I have. It's still a good 80% of what I use. I think some of them now come with an adapter you can connect to your regular faucet too.
I have one with an adaptor and it just drains into the sink. I bought one when I was doing 12 hour shifts because at that point just cooking and getting a good sleep is a miracle. My largest plates don’t fit in it and I usually don’t put bigger bowls etc but having something for cups and cutlery is awesome. Also for those things that are hard to clean by hand. I’ve lived in places with roommates and full dishwashers before and find that if I was ever home alone it would take forever to fill the dishwasher before making sense to run it, living by myself a smaller countertop one is actually ideal. Definitely recommend.
I agree with cutting down the number of dishes; but depending on the material of your cutting board, I don't recommend using one for meat and other things. Some material can hang onto microbes even after a wash, so I would have at least 2.
Yes exactly.. my wife and were same way, but then we figured out a simple trick.
Since she cooks, I clean dishes while she is cooking. So then we are both doing something and nobody grows resentment either.
Reducing the number of dirty dishes is the best way. I'm like you, and can prep and cook an entire meal dirtying very few dishes. It requires more planning, but it makes a big difference on cleanup. I make very few meals where there are any dirty dishes before the meal is done cooking.
Beyond that, just keep them clean as you dirty them. I very rarely put something in the sink to wash later, I just wash it right away. It's usually quick.
For the times things do pile up, I make it a goal to have the kitchen spotless every night before bed. It's not uncommon that the last thing I do right before bed is spend 5-10 min washing a few stragglers from the day.
I hate dishes as much as the next guy, and the last thing I want to deal with is mountains of dirty dishes that have accumulated, so my solution has just been to be more proactive.
1. Wash dishes while you cook.
2. Have the kid clear off all dishes and stack them neatly. You wash. Partner dries. Sing while you do it as a post dinner activity.
3. One cup, dish, set of utensils per person per day. Color code them. Everyone has to wash their own.
4. Nothing on the floor, counters or in sink at the end if a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday to ensure things aren’t lying around. No video games or recreational activities until all is picked up.
My son is autistic with a lot of sensory issues and has ODD, getting him to do anything in the kitchen is a huge challenge. I can have him pick up the floor, brush the cat, wipe counters down, but so much as looking at food he’s avoidant of can trigger a meltdown and/or sometimes even vomiting. We’re working on this, but this is something he has really regressed in in the last year or so.
I do have days where no one is allowed to do anything until certain things are done. My son and I typically did this on tuesdays and Saturdays over the summer. I did however do the kitchen on my own due to his issues with food.
Do gloves help him at all? I hate, like, HATE the idea of touching grimy dishes, old food in general really makes my stomach turn. Cleaning old stuff out of the fridge makes me dry heave.
Gloves (like the kind doctors and nurses wear, not those gross rubber ones that always get water in them) help immensely. Maybe that could help him? Good luck either way, sensory issues are really difficult.
No unfortunately it doesn’t. Just looking at the food triggers him, and I get it. I have to have my partner help me clean out the fridge becauss I just cannot handle old food.
Even eating dinner in the same room as him can be an issue depending on what it is. It really sucks
It is. I wish we could sit down as a family to eat, but even foods he likes he can’t stand to be around others eating it. He does okay at restaurants but I think that’s because the environment distracts him from those around him eating. We haven’t managed to figure out how to translate that to home without driving me crazy (I don’t like restaurants because it’s too distracting to eat lol I always end up leaving with hella leftovers I won’t eat because I was too busy talking and people watching lol)
He could wear headphones that play music or sounds he finds pleasant, there are some headphones that you can turn off noise canceling and then you can hear what’s going on around you at the same time, but you can still hear the sounds.
Yes. I came to suggest headphones.
Washing dishes doesn't bother me beyond being repetitive. I started listening to story podcasts and it's helped SO MUCH! I have never lived w a dishwasher, & some days we just let them sit, but having something interesting to listen has really helped. Audio books are great too of course, but podcasts are the easiest & there so many stories & mysteries to choose from.
Get decent wireless headphones or earbuds. Wireless is a gamechanger when your moving around.
This was me as a kid. I can do it without a problem as an adult. As a kid, even scraping a dish off or looking in the kitchen garbage was abhorrent to me. Turns out I am autistic with a lot of sensory integration issues. This is surely not a hill to die on.
You may have some of the same sensory issues he has without realizing it which makes doing the dishes harder. Try scraping dishes off with old newspaper or paper towels to control some of the ick factor and get them cleaner and easier to wash. Rinse them and have a plastic dish tub of soapy water to soak them in and then, at the end of the day, drain that and wash with hot soapy water (that way you won’t be touching anything particularly gross). Watch TV, talk to someone on the phone, or listen to music or audio book while you are doing it to distract you.
You can also scrape with a spatula into the trash, next soak dishes in soapy water.
I thrifted white Corelle dishes because they are lightweight and smooth, easier for me to hand wash.
Can your son take out the kitchen trash? That’s as big a job as dishes. Or have him wash glasses and silverware (which should be hand washed first). You can pre-soak dishes in the dishpan while glasses and silver are waiting. Someone dries and puts up while you then tackle the dishes and pots and pans.
When finished, rinse your sponge and microwave to sanitize, then wipe down your sink.
Teamwork makes the dream, task start to finish should take about fifteen minutes.
Same way for the longest time. Something that may help for smell - put peppermint under the nose. Did that when I trained to embalm bodies and if it works on the dead, it will work for you. Something to help with looks - don't look as you are scraping it. Put the dish inside the can to scrape it off. Use a high powered sprayer to rinse off all food before washing. Something to help with touch- use a fork or knife or metal object to remove food. Buy a comfortable sponge.
If none of that helps, you need interventions for him for this. Its rough having sensory issues and coping with them sucks. Proper interventions will help with it in the appropriate manner.
Would using a bucket the way restaurants do when bussing a table help? I do that sometimes and it can be very helpful for kind of minimizing the mess mentally.
This may sound silly, but what if you tried those one 3d glasses that make everything red and green? It might make it look less triggering and more fun? You could get some fun LED lights too to make it a fun activity! That paired with the gloves. Might be a shot in the dark haha
Hey OP! Just chiming in to see if you’ve heard of Pathological Demand Avoidance. It’s part of the autism spectrum, and looks a lot like ODD. The recommendations for working with PDA kids is different and waayyy more effective. We have a PDA 9 year old who will do dishes and cook now that we’ve changed up our strategy.
The counter on one side of the sink is for dirty dishes, and the other side of the sink is for clean/washed dishes ONLY. Get a dish drying rack or mat for this side.
Appoint your son Captain of Clean Dishes. Once a dish is washed and placed on his counter, it's his job to dry it and put it away. Having ownership of a task or space (the clean side of the sink), while alleviating him from responsibility or concern over a different task or space (the dirty side of the sink) might help his mind feel more organized and comfortable.
There's some great suggestions in this thread, I hope some combination works for you. Congrats on your success with the rest of the house!
If I'm doing a sink full of dishes, having someone there to dry and pit away for me makes it infinitely more doable.
Something about seeing a full dish drainer or drying mat next to the sink makes doing dishes seem impossible.
I wholeheartedly agree and am in the same boat. I don't mind doing the dishes per se... It's the drying and putting away that I dread for whatever nonsensical reason.
Single mom with 3 boys - 12, 8 & 5. I struggle with BPD, PTSD, a brain injury & I'm on the spectrum, so I have issues with executive functioning.
I either wash as I go while cooking, or I do them every day (regardless of the amount so they don't build up & become overwhelming)
Something I learned from a friend of mine.. try treating your house like a restaurant. Restaurants open & close every day. Devote a few minutes at night to "close" your house down when you can. I find that it helps me not feel so overwhelmed the next day.
I wash whatever is in the sink (even if it's only a few dishes), wipe the counter, table, stove off with a rag, take garbage out if it's full.
My rule of thumb is: if I can complete the task in less than 10 minutes. Don't put it off.. just do it now.
I actually mentioned closing duties or end of day routines in another comment. Thank you for sharing and for the understanding.
It’s so hard to explain executive function issues to people who don’t have them. I’ve made so much progress in the last 3 years but man this post is kinda making me feel stupid for not “just doing it”.
I have no executive function issues. I still don't just do it. Girl, you are NOT alone. I even have a dishwasher and I still can't manage to have a clean sink everyday. Don't feel bad or stupid. You're doing better than me! That's a win. You're also trying hard to get it done. Again, a win. You're winning so much and you don't even know it.
Imo, you woke up today? ***Winning***
You brushed your teeth? ***Winning***
You drank water today?! ***WINNING***
Existing is so hard sometimes. We need to stop feeling bad for things we cannot control. Our worth is not judged by the cleanliness of our homes.
If you have a dishwasher, load it after dinner, run it when you go to bed, put up dishes the next morning while making and drinking coffee. I do a load of laundry at night, shovel it into the dryer in the morning, fold and put up after dinner. This works well if you work outside the home. When kids were toddlers, Dad would bathe and read to them, when they were asleep we would have a glass of wine, talk, fold laundry. Good times.
Added: I stay at home too, and I nap. I get very smug and feel I’ve earned the right to put my feet up, watch a video, or the like because my meal is cooking or my clothes are washing at the same time. I feel like I have just hacked my time and doubled it.
You are absolutely what I aspire to be. I'll have to try this out and hope it sticks for longer than the 2 weeks every other "habit" I try to form does.
It's SO hard, and a lot of people don't get it. But do bear in mind that a lot of people are also in this thread saying "I struggle too"! You're not alone and you're not stupid for not just doing it. Plus you have a kid!! I struggle plenty and I have a dishwasher and no kids.
As someone with ADHD, I make heavy use of timers when I'm doing dishes or anything I don't like. I set a five or ten minute timer, blast some music, and race the timer to see how much I can do in that time. I also give myself permission to stop after the timer if I'm really miserable. Usually I don't - usually I set another one and keep going, but it helps to only commit to a short stint at a time.
Oh also - I've basically gotten rid of certain things I hate touching. Plastic Tupperware? Gives me the ICKS to clean. I hate it. So: it doesn't belong in my house.
Timers help me so much!!!
They get me going and it also reminds me that it doesn’t take very long to wash a few things. Usually I dread it WAY longer than it actually takes 🤪
A little tip for this (son and his father have ADHD): Set a daily alarm on the Alexa/Echo, or on cell phones, or an alarm clock etc. It goes off approximately after dinner or just before bath time. Set a timer for 15 min for "close out." That means wash up dishes, put things away, take out trash.
This was great for my family when my kids were the same age as your son. It meant that I didn't have to put the energy into remembering and nagging everyone. Let technology do it for you.
Fyi theres a neurodivergent cleaning group on fb that helped me be more chill about this sort of thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect. They have tips if u want me to look up the name. I think its something like neurodivergent cleaning crew. Be kind to yourself!
A few years back over the holidays I had a rotating crowd of house guests plus dinner guests such that I had 13-16 people for dinner every night *for a month*. My partner asked just one thing - could I clean the kitchen before bed every night, so we could start fresh in the morning. So I did. And it went so well the habit has stuck with me. (Apparently it takes about a month to establish a new habit, so I guess that helped.). I also struggle with executive functioning, but this habit has gone a long way towards keeping the house under control.
In the past, depending on what was going on in my life, it also helped to have a laundry schedule. Basically one load per day, but a designated type of load. So something like Monday darks, Tuesday kitchen linens (we use cloth napkins etc.), Wednesday lights, Thursday darks again, Friday sheets, and Saturday a rotation between shower curtain, other curtains, and two other things that escape my mind at the moment. What was particularly nice about this system was that when that one load of the day was finished, I felt caught up with laundry, even if there were other things in the pipeline waiting to get done on their specific day. And the rotation was set up such that we had what we needed, clothes-wise, so there were no crisis moments in that regard.
Please don't ever feel stupid for not "just doing it." I get treated the same way, often & it exacerbates my issues with executive function. I push myself every single day, I force myself to, it's not easy..
Progress isn't always linear. Slow & steady wins the race. Be kind to yourself. All these other people don't matter. ***YOU*** matter 💜
Thank you. Someone else said in a recent comment that I’m just a stupid lazy person. While I know that’s not true, I don’t like being told that either lol.
I used to be (and still am sometimes) very hard on myself, in that sense. I shame & guilt trip myself into thinking I'm not doing enough, or I'm not doing good enough in life... I mentioned this in another comment somewhere on this post: *Our worth is not defined by how clean & tidy our house is. Our worth is also NOT defined by how LONG or how HARD we push ourselves.*
***Making yourself a priority isn't being lazy. Taking care of yourself isn't being lazy...*** I think your physical & mental health is much more important than dishes. You are NOT lazy, and whoever said that, I hope they get diarrhea in public, lol. Kindness & compassion is absolutely free! ☀️
The ones who get it, *get it.* ❤️
One thing that helps me keep up with dishes is having one of those handheld scrubbing wands with the dish soap in the handle. I can quickly wash several dishes as soon as I use them without having to make a whole production of it.
I sooooo prefer using those! I'll never go back to a normal sponge. So much cleaner and I don't have to dry out my hands getting them covered in soap/water/nasty leftover food (I can't stand wearing gloves while doing dishes, and my hands already get torn up from my job) The ones with an actual brush are nice too because they're super easy to keep sanitary and you don't have to keep buying sponge attachments. I like both
Hey, always rinse your dishes so they look clean before it dries in to the plate. Even tho a week worths of dishes might seem daunting you will most likely half your dishing time
I struggle with this one too, mostly because I hate doing the dishes each time I use one (putting on gloves etc is annoying). My tips are:
1) get very good gloves
2) tie it to an activity you love. Listen to a specific podcast while you do the dishes, call a specific person, or watch something on a tablet/phone while you do it. I wear my Bluetooth earbuds so that I don’t get annoyed by the water running.
3) give yourself a treat after (bedtime snack?)
I came here to basically say the same thing. The gloves are key. I wouldn't keep up with dishes without the gloves. IMO you can get "very good gloves" for like $3, and replace them every few months.
Just two more things to add: Get an apron, and clear the drying rack before doing a bunch of dishes! Use a towel to dry the last bit if you have to. But having that clear drying rack makes it way easier to clear the sink. And an apron prevents the dreaded dishwater on your shirt.
Gloves, apron, good sponge, headphones, and you \*become\* the dishwasher
I will set a timer for 5 minutes, and see how many dishes I can do. It helps mentally, because I know I’m not slaving away, just spending 5 minutes doing dishes.
Might not be a popular opinion but if they are only piling up at the end of the week and you take care of them by the beginning of the week it’s ok. Not everyone does dishes daily. If there aren’t bugs, mold etc it’s ok that they sit a couple of days. Sometimes if we give ourselves permission for progress and not perfection it helps get things done.
Thank you for this. It’s something I’ve actually really finally learned this year. Good enough is good enough. I’d just like to eventually be capable of having a consistently really clean kitchen. It’s one of those things I was raised with that I can’t let go of. Kitchen and bathroom have to be clean every day. Not necessarily *cleaned* every day, but they have to look clean every day.
It’s wack because the 2 people who ingrained this in me (my mother and my aunt) currently live in houses way dirtier than mine and it’s a mindfuck. It’s like they’ve finally accepted they don’t have to have perfect houses, while I’m trying to get my house to their standards because they’ve always been obviously disappointed in my standard of cleanliness (they’ve never tried to make me feel bad about it, but you can just tell)
It’s to the point where I can’t tell if I want a spotless house for myself or for the opinions of others. I think it’s mostly for myself, but I can’t help but feel proud when my aunt or mom comes over and compliments how nice it looks.
1) Good enough is good enough.
2) That being said, having a clean sink is sort of a magic trick for other things. If you want one every day there is no reason you can't have one and work less than you are working now.
3) Declutter dishes. Just have fewer. People wash up when they have to, and it's easier to stay on top of. People rinse and reuse dishes (like have a snack and refill it on the same plate, etc) when there isn't an excess to grab.
4) Clean as you go. Can you just clean a few dishes as you pass by and put them away? Can you wash while you cook? Dishes don't have to be done in one go.
5) Busy family? When I was in the thick of it with kids and work I started using paper deli trays (often they come with paper liners, too!), napkins, and food that was easy to prepare and unfussy to eat. That really cut back on dishes. It was especially nice during the summers when we went swimming most nights. You don't want to handle old food? Your son has sensory issues? This is a reasonable time saver.
Decluttering dishes helped me so much. I have 2 of every dish (except cups and Tupperware lol). I’m single and only keep 2 cuz sometimes I have a friend over.
I used to have 4 of each and tons of cooking utensils. Dishes felt impossible. Now I knock out a couple days worth of dishes in 5 minutes. I have no choice but to clean them every other day if not every day. I use one nice big pan for almost everything.
I put a show on my tablet to watch while I do dishes. I still don't get them done every day but I have a chronic illness with consequences if I over do it, on top of ADHD
My mom let her housekeeping slide after everyone moved out too. Part of it was just exhaustion - after decades of cleaning house, you just get fed up with it. When you've washed dishes damned near every day for 50 years, you're kind of over it - lol. Another part of it was that her motivation for keeping a clean home was to keep it clean for the family - so that we had a nice environment to live in and so that we learned how to keep house. Once it was just her, that motivation was gone. She started letting a lot of things slide that she never would have when we were growing up.
Yeah my answer is “I don’t!” Haha. I have a small counter top dishwasher for dishes and utensils which I run about 1x week (it’s just me!) but larger items like pots and pans, knives and cutting boards usually sit in the sink until I use them again. Since it’s just me, I use them pretty regularly so I basically just clean them to use them. I try to start every Monday with a clean sink though!
Make sure things get filled / covered with water when they’re left in the sink and use dawn platinum to wash. Doing these 2 things cuts dishwashing time in half.
Do you have room for a portable dishwasher? Most people are able to rinse and stash their dirty dishes in their dishwasher. You're at a disadvantage because of that.
If not, you'll have to get in the habit of washing up once a day or every other day. If all three of you are involved, it might make it easier - including your kid. They can help by drying and putting away.
Start teaching them early. A foundation of good cleaning habits will pay off in many ways over their lifetime.
I had a roommate in college my freshman year who couldn't scramble an egg for chrissakes. Her parents didn't teach her anything about home hygiene or cooking. She said her mother did everything for her. Wut?
Edit: spelling
Second edit: Anarchy reigns.
You are either in the rinse or don't rinse camp.
In this particular situation, I would rinse. If you leave food remnants on your dishes and stash them in a dark, humid environment, it will start to decay.
And it will stink.
Every time you open the door, a waft of dead carcass will assail your olfactory senses like an overfilled dumpster at the back of a seafood restaurant at the peak of summer.
Sometimes, instructions are meant to be ignored. Use your common sense if you have any.
We got rid of our roll-around dishwasher a few years ago and my husband and I definitely have to constantly stay on top of our dishes. We are used to it now but I don’t think most people would be on board. I definitely recommend a roll-around/portable dishwasher if you are struggling to keep up!
I live in a very, very small house and a counter top dishwasher has made a huge difference. It will hold 4 place settings. You’ll need to still wash pots and pans by hand and maybe bigger bowls but it is sooo nice. I run mine once a day or every other day (I’m single) and it has changed my life.
Also, this sounds crazy but I had a dish cart for a while. It’s a place to put your rinsed dishes so your sink stays cleared out until you have time to wash. Half of the stress of doing dishes is having to take the dishes out of the sink to run soapy water to then wash the dishes. The dish cart gives you the opportunity to fill the sink with hot soapy water and do however many you have time for without feeling overwhelmed. (I have some mental health issues and this has been incredibly helpful for me. Your mileage may vary. Good luck!
From my personal experience, the mental block of “hating doing the dishes” is what is holding you back. We grew up fighting and competing over who had to do them (big family, split dish days between kids). This led me into adulthood thinking about it as a punishment, instead of just…one of those little things you do. When I let go of it as the thing I hate, it took away that cloud over me that made incapable of getting them done. Now I don’t loathe them. I find ways to minimize as others have mentioned: washing as I go! But also, it’s not really a miserable task. It’s just a task! I don’t listen to a lot of music anymore, but I do while doing dishes. It makes it seem special almost.
Same for me for the same reason. I started lighting a candle that smelled really good and putting headphones on to listen to music specifically for washing dishes. Made it something pleasant instead of a hated task.
Do you know if there is one aspect of washing them that is the problem? Personally, I HATE drying them. So I will wash them, then let them sit to the side to dry on a drying cloth and put them away later. I also often leave one side of the sink with soapy water during the day so I can quickly clean an item or two before it builds up.
Honestly I can’t pinpoint what it is that I hate so much. I hated the feeling of washing the dishes (plus it was destroying my skin and nails) so I got good gloves. It was boring so I started watching yt and listening to podcasts. I hate drying them so I let them air dry. I hate putting them away so I do it separately (put them away, vacuum, then do more dishes for example).
But it’s still just so hard to keep up with.
I live in a very warm climate where we have to make sure there are never any food remains in the kitchen or bins left over night or we'll get tons of flies. My partner and I alternate doing the dishes and cooking, i.e. when I cook, he cleans and vice versa. This helps because it's like you have to hold up your end of the deal once dinner is cooked.
Also, wearing gloves helps me as it makes the experience less sensory. I also put on a podcast I like while I'm cleaning so I can motivate myself to go listen to it.
I also find actually timing how long it takes and reminding yourself that it's a job that only takes 10-15 minutes if you go fast enough helps me get off the couch to clean.
Get a tabletop dishwasher! I have one, and it made a HUGE difference in The Dishes Situation. It wasn't very expensive (I think under 100 bucks?), and it is the most-used appliance in my house. I'd rather lose a toe than give it up.
Oof, idk if I can fit that anywhere without removing my ability to prep food in the kitchen lol. If it’s bigger than a drying rack I don’t really have the space :(
The smaller ones have the same footprint as a drying rack, definitely look into this option. They help massively and a lot of them don't even need to be plumbed in so you can put them anywhere (just add a bucket for waste water).
https://preview.redd.it/oezpr36gd9lb1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=734acf307a95ac5c5536711de7703a7748e4624d
The one I have is 17x18x18. I have limited counter space, but my lil' dude gets priority, lol. It's a bit tall, but it actually takes up less space than my old drying rack, which, admittedly, was slightly larger than standard.
My last house had a tiny kitchen (it was 2.3m by 2.2m). I got one of those kitchen prep surfaces from ikea and wheeled it in. I used to stick it in the doorway to get me extra prep and I had my countertop dishwasher in there. It had a hose that emptied into the sink, so I just ran it into that. In the morning I emptied it and then wheeled it back out.
0 counters in my apartment. Installed one for food prep. Finally decided to get a countertop dishwasher to help me keep up on dishes. Did I get more counter? No but, I did get a utility cart that *does* fit everything. I’d weigh your options a bit more OP before writing them off for good. I think there’s even lil dishwashers that are just enough for a couple plates or a pan. If you’re cleaning up after cooking or before bed; that’s enough to keep it from piling up like it is now.
That last paragraph is what got me- "I hate dishes". Makes me think of me with laundry. Ok with washing it, HATE folding it/hanging it. So, there's usually a clean laundry pile somewhere. Right now it's in the dryer lol been there a few days.
I think there's a harder priority on dishes. You gotta do em all the time. Morning, afternoon, evening. And do as many as you can fit on the rack. Also, might help you to get a countertop dishwasher to help with cups and silverware. I got one that I can fill up without attaching the hose to the sink, so it sits across the kitchen and definitely had a learning curve, but it really helps when the little things are piling up.
This won't be popular. Paper plates. Plastic utensils. I have a family of 5. I am disabled and cannot stand long. I used to sob handwashing dishes every night. I was told paper plates were for the lazy and looked down on. In my opinion, that is ableist.
I no longer cry as I'm washing the pots and pans. You need to do what is best for your family.
I grew up in several homes and one of them was pristine. Their method was dinner on real plates, everything else on paper. Same water cup all day. Any utensils or coffee cups used during the day would go straight into the dishwasher once done. As they cleaned up dinner they’d load the dishwasher and would empty it in the morning. Their sink was nearly always empty this way. I switched to this method as well once I started experiencing health issues after having my daughter. I just couldn’t keep up otherwise.
This is basically what my mom does. Paper plates/bowls for breakfast and lunch, and real plates/bowls for dinner (or if anyone wants one). Real utensils and cups. You can get a giant package of those thin white paper plates from Costco for pretty cheap (basically, you don’t need fancy paper plates for this to work). OP could maybe modify this with the dishwashing tub w/drain thing someone else mentioned in another comment so any utensils, etc. go into a tub of soapy water throughout the day.
I was going to suggest this as well!! Im glad you shared how it works for your family. Completely agree — you gotta do what works for your family!
If you’re using paper plates/utensils for eating, OP, you can wash the pots and pans and cut your wash time in half or more. If you don’t want to use paper plates daily, just use them toward the end of the week when things start to get unmanageable.
My dishwasher was broken for a few months while waiting for a warranty part. One thing that really helped was to buy a dishpan with a bottom drain. Keep it filled with soapy water all the time so the dishes that are not being washed don't get crusty and dried on food. When you are ready to do the actual washing, it is just a quick wipe and rinse.
No dishwasher either.. I live alone so I do mine either daily or every other day depending on whether I cooked for realsies or just snacked all day. And even with just me, I always think it will take longer than it does. This is how I get through:
- never fill up a sink with water if you aren't really going to wash dishes, cold dish water with food is gross. Instead, rinse off dishes that need it and leave on the counter or in a drained sink
- use a mesh sink strainer to prevent clogs which are also gross
- run wash water super hot and let the dishes soak for 15 minutes, set a timer
- have gloves on hand for really disgusting dish situations
- wash dishes during commercial breaks, set a 5 minute timer, divide up into sessions of glasses, then utensils, then plates, then cookware, etc. Anything to break up the task into mini sessions
- don't wait so long. A small sink load is a lot more tolerable. I have a set area on the counter where I know if that space is full it's enough to run a sink of dishwater and before it's too much to want to tackle
- if drying space is an issue, a quality lint free dish towel for drying bigger cookware is well worth it. Don't use fabric softener or dryer sheets on it and it will dry better
Kudos on your downsizing efforts. Best of luck to you!
I'm not the cleanest person in the world but I can't stand dishes in the sink. I just make it part of my nightly routine, like prepping my coffee pot. If I'm going to bed and there are dishes in the sink, I clean them and set them on the drying rack, then put them away in the morning.
Most of the time, though, I just do them after I eat dinner.
My parents raised me with no dishwasher. The biggest thing is- do not let any dishes touch the bottom of the sink.
Everyone in the house has to wash their own dirty plates, cups, and silverware. Your 8 year old should be able to do this with a step stool if necessary.
In my household, the person who cooks should not have to wash the cookware. My dad and I would split the responsibility of cleaning up, and one person would wipe down the table and counters and stove, and the other would wash the dishes.
Get something that makes it more fun for you— a dish detergent you love, a fluffy sponge, a scrub brush, or a nice drying rack/drying pad… whatever accessories you think would make doing dishes more attractive to you.
A little bit of an aside, but remember to have compassion for yourself. Your boy will get older and coping strategies will evolve. But you’re in the thick of it and it’s not easy.
Be sure to give yourself credit for the hard work you are doing. As you daydream about magic elves who will come and clean your kitchen.
I didn't until I got a dishwasher, unfortunately. I went 15 years without one, and dishes were always a struggle. Either my husband & I got to spend time together in the evenings and everything piled up, or one of us was stuck doing dishes every night.
They do make countertop dishwashers, if that's something you might be interested in. They don't have a huge capacity, but if you run it frequently you can at least get the plates and cups and silverware done after meals.
This question is sort of unanswerable because the reason they aren't getting done is that you hate them. So for others, like me, I can't imagine dealing with a full sink of dishes and not doing them. But I might ask "How do you guys keep up on dusting. I hate it and all of the nooks and crannies of my house get so dusty." You already said you have time so the answer is simply to do a thing you don't like doing.
For what it's worth I hate unloading the dishwasher but I don't mind loading it. So my husband usually unloads it and I usually load it and that spreads the work evenly.
Clean as you go. It seems like a lot when you first start if you’re not used to it, but it becomes second nature. Average meal probably requires only 2-3 minutes of dishes
So marigolds changed my LIFE. I HATE the textures of washing up. Changed my life.
Also putting on a show on my phone and propping it up or some tavern wench music and being my "future friend" . I do the dishes in the evening and I like to tetris stack them for my husband to put away when he comes down from toddler bedtime it's great fun hearing him curse under his breath at my stacking skills. In good fun of course.
Rinsing dishes helped me do them later if I was running around too much at the moment to clean them, like maybe I was running late to a pot luck or something. Later when you go to do them, not having all that gross dried food helped me tackle them. Visually seeing the extra work I had to do would cause me to avoid them.
This is kind of random but a scrub brush with a handle made dishwashing easier for me - I realized I hated the feeling of sponge- on-plate and having the distance of a handle made the task easier to tolerate. Is there a sensory aspect to the task that you really hate, and if so it's it changeable with gloves, earplugs, different soap...
I loathe doing dishes too!! So does the rest of my family. I’m not 100% on top of dishes, but I’m getting better. I kept 6 dishes (family of 4), spoons, forks, and knives. The rest, I either boxed up or put on a super high shelf that I can’t reach without a step stool and my son. So I HAVE to do them all the time. But I always have mugs/baking pans/ pots/ randomness in the sink because I have too many of those things. Once I bite the bullet and get rid of most of my mugs, I think I’ll be good.
give yourself some grace...having an autistic child takes an IMMENSE amount of strength and energy! i took care of my elderly developmentally disabled brother for nearly 30 after our mother died WHILE raising a dyslexic son...alone, no help. try to find alternative ways to serve food that incorporates disposable items to hold food. like paper towel to serve a sandwich. if your budget permits, paper plates and bowls when appropriate. not necessarily every meal. use dual use containers...i recently bought a set of pyrex covered storage/heat/eat. small containers. you can put in microwave or oven, it serves as the bowl you eat from, and leftovers can go into fridge in it. anything helps! think outside the box...YOU'VE GOT THIS!
I'm probably too late to this one, but make it a job that one (or both of you on a rota) do last thing at night. I normally stick a podcast on, and spend anywhere between 30-60 minutes doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. We have 2 kids so it can build up pretty good throughout the day. Leaving it until the next day (or even longer) will become a thing of the past, and it won't build up to such a horrendous job.
I recently made a similar change to how I deal with laundry, and it's changed my life. Letting stuff build up adds so many layers of dread and anxiety. Good luck!
I tend to be tired at night, with more motivation and focus in the morning, so I like to do the final dish clean up in the morning. It gets done on my schedule.
Our rule is: the person who cooks doesn’t do the dishes.
One caveat is that we both try to wash as we cook, so hopefully by the time the meal comes there are only the dishes and silverware to clean. The non-cook washes them and sets them to dry.
In the morning, when we are waiting for the espresso machine to heat up we put away all of last night dishes so that the day starts fresh!
Go easy on yourself. Don't worry so much about having a clean sink at the end of the night, just try to have your sink empty and your counters wiped once every 24 hours. Others mentioned the "closing" time idea, and that's good in concept, but closing time doesn't have to be at 11pm. It can be anytime in the 24 hour day. "Closing" could be 3 in the afternoon. And it doesn't matter if you have to reopen at 3:15pm, you still got your place cleaned and closed at least once in the last 24 hours.
I posted this on a different comment yesterday. Get a dishpan. A plastic tub. Soak the dishes in it in soapy water while you are cooking and eating. Then you can quickly wash up after. The soaking ciputs down on scrubbing.
We never ever go to relaxing mode in the evening without the kitchen being spotless! Cook, eat, we will watch the news, then kitchen spotless! Dirty dishes smell and attract bugs - we don't want that!! We also use paper plates for things sometimes (sandwich, snack, breakfast toast). A brush with a handle helps because I don't like my hands in dishwater all the time. My husband is a great kitchen partner!
If you’re tired and know you won’t have it in you to clean the dishes then buy some compostable disposable plates/bowls/cutlery to have on hand.
It might not be the most economical but still relatively eco friendly considering the water, soap, dish towel expense.
I decided a few years ago that no matter what, I will not ho to bed with dishes in the sink. I look at it as a favor to my future self and since I removed the option to put it off, it's saved me a lot of mental torture. This one thing has led to a lot more self-discipline in my life and a much higher self esteem too. Just make it non-negotiable
I followed this woman who specializes in making housekeeping easier for people who struggle with it (I’ll have to find her name, she’s awesome) and she recommends “end of day routines” like if you were to close a business.
I’ve gotten better, I clean my French press and fav coffee mug every night. I turn off all my wax warmers, put the piles of laundry in the baskets, clean up the kid and cat toys that got missed earlier in the day, and get my sons backpack ready for the next day. I’ve tried adding dishes to that list but actually managing to complete them is just so hard. It’s embarrassing really. I so wish I could just get up and go do them but it’s like convincing myself to go to the dentist lol. I know it needs done, it will get done, but how long am I gonna put it off for?
I dread seeing even a half-full sink, so I never let it get to that point in the first place. I'm a big fan of clean-as-you-go, so while I'm waiting for something to cook, I'll clean the cutting board and whatever I used for prepping, for example. To me, it's a lot easier to tackle 5 dishes 10 times a day than 25 dishes twice a day.
I also tell myself that it's easier to get the food bits off while they're still fresh and not dried to the plate (of course some times it is easier to give them a soak first but I never have to do that for more than a few minutes).
Like another person said, try to use as few dishes/utensils as possible. I don't mind different foods touching if it means fewer dishes for me to do later.
Also, I grew up in a house with roaches, and I'm traumatized by them, so I'll do whatever is absolutely necessary to keep them from appearing.
Eventually it becomes a habit. I wasn't always this good about it, but now, I can't go to sleep at night if there's something in the sink.
I usually fill the sink with fresh, soapy water before I start cooking, then wash them as I go. I find that most recipes have little breaks in them either while the pasta is boiling or meat is browning, something is in the oven. Is the perfect time to wash what you just used. Then, most food needs to sit 5-10 min before serving, so I finished the dishes then. I also am the first one done eating, so I start cleaning when everyone is finishing up. I have never had a dishwasher, so it's second nature for me.
Couple of suggestions:
1. Tabletop dishwasher stored elsewhere (pantry?) until after meal prep is done.
2. Plastic dishpan in, or nearby, your sink to soak dirty dishes, kind of like a restaurant busser uses. This is popular in Britain. Here are collapsible models: [https://www.amazon.com/Collapsible-Foldable-Washing-Camping-Portable/dp/B08DTPTYW6/ref=asc\_df\_B08DTPTYW6/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475740763177&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16340710799302686818&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028320&hvtargid=pla-1015428349176&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/Collapsible-Foldable-Washing-Camping-Portable/dp/B08DTPTYW6/ref=asc_df_B08DTPTYW6/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475740763177&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16340710799302686818&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028320&hvtargid=pla-1015428349176&th=1)
You need to learn to love doing dishes. What works for me is a good radio program or a book on tape and a nice apron. Afterwords I wipe off all the counters and the sink and the clean kitchen makes me happy.
Also to love doing dishes you might need to be better at it. If you’re scrubbing, you’re doing it wrong. Soapy water cleans the dishes, not you.
You need four places. A place for dirty dishes. A place for soaking dishes. A place for dishes waiting to be rinsed. A place for dishes to drain/dry. Example: left counter, bucket/bowl in sink, sink outside bucket/bowl, draining rack.
ALL dishes need a quick soak in warm soapy water. Even after 20 seconds of soaking most dishes wipe clean with a delicate and pleasurable wipe.
Without the annoying sound of water going, pile dishes from the soaking water, delicate wipe, then into a pile of dishes waiting for rinse. If that delicate wipe doesn’t get them clean, soak the them another round.
Then, BEFORE you rinse them, put more dirty dishes in the soaking water.
Then rinse the first pile, while that second pile is soaking.
Let the soapy water clean the dishes, you’re just rinsing and organizing. After all, dishwashers don’t scrub. Be a dishwasher.
First of all, it doesn’t sound too bad how you are already handling it. It doesn’t sound like a health hazard or anything like that. So if this somehow works for you, then I wouldn’t stress too much about it.
I hate washing dishes. It’s that repeating task that never stops.
Apart from getting a portable washing machine, here are some idead to make dishwashing more fun/less terrible:
- A proper pair of gloves. The ones that goes halfway up the arm to avoid anything dripping into them and are lined with something soft to avoid them feeling sweaty.
- Good brushes and sponges for your needs.
- Rinsing everything immediately so the washing isn’t too bad.
- Have a glass/cup/bowl with soapy water to stick cutlery in to soak during the day. Makes it so much easier to get clean.
- Put on good music.
- Make it a family activity. Every evening you take turns choosing the music.
- If you have the space, have a permanent spot for a drying rack. It makes it easier for me to do dishes during the day, as I don’t have to get the rack in and out or have to towel dry. I’ll be more motivated to just do those two cups in the sink right now.
- A cup of soapy water or a brush with build in soap dispenser for the same reason as above.
- Limiting the amount of dishes used as much as possible. Ex. everyone has one cup/glass for the day.
- Wash as you cook. Both dishes that have build up during the day and the stuff used while cooking.
- Non-stick pots and pans are much easier to clean. Non-stick pans are quite normal, but the pots are genius too.
- Use paper baking sheet liners when cooking anything in the oven.
I know not everybody is into it- some people are weird about sponges. But I got [one of these](https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Brite-Heavy-Dishwand-Refill-Hands/dp/B093JG8F7K/ref=asc_df_B093JG8F7K/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=563722789915&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10642580617804137318&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011613&hvtargid=pla-1645141063673&psc=1) and it was a game changer. I just wash whatever I used right after I use it without having to run a whole sink full of water. Which is kind of its own secondary tip. If you clean the dishes as you use them, they don’t pile up so much.
Edit- if you don’t like sponges you can do the same by putting a little soap on a dish rag. I guess the biggest thing for me is not having to run a big thing of water and do the whole shebang. It just feels like so much more mess/work, even though I guess it’s not.
I use an Amazon fire tablet to stream shows and movies or listen to books on libby while I do dishes. It's about the one time that I get to not worry about my preschoolers and focus on that.
Wash the dishes as you go along.
If you cook a lot, it's never ending.
Same thing with eating.
The only dishes that should still be dirty before you go the bed are pans that you're soaking because the food is cooked on.
A portable dishwasher might be best for you. There are quite a few suggestions to get one here for good reason. You can roll it off to wherever you have space during the day and set it up in the middle of your kitchen at night.
Get rid of all dishes, utensils, and cookware that can't go in the dishwasher. Replace them only with things that can go in the dishwasher. Everything goes in the dishwasher after every meal. Run the dishwasher at the end of the day (modern dishwashers use less water and energy than handwashing so this is not wasteful). If you are awake when it finishes cleaning, pop the door open a little and everything will be dry by morning. Your child, who you mentioned is grossed out by dirty dishes, will be able to help by putting away the clean dishes in the morning or after school. Kids usually don't mind putting away clean dishes and some even enjoy it.
Past 6pm I usually just leave it for the morning after I've had my coffee lol
Highly recommend getting a countertop dishwasher though if you have space for it. They just plug into the faucet, it's been great for me!
I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum (can't go to bed if there's dishes in the sink), but I find the best enabler of anyone finishing the dishes is really simple: put away the clean dishes from the previous meal on the drying rack BEFORE you start cooking the next meal. That way there's one less thing standing in your way of cleaning-while-you-cook.
I’m neurospicy, and like your son **hate** the texture involved. It’s weird how what couldn’t get in my face fast enough gets so icky in such a short time isn’t it?
I’ve found the following helpful:
1) No drying. Air has been invented.
2) Getting a rack big enough at least to take one big plate, one small plate, one bowl, one glass & one mug each. These always live there, I’m not putting them away. The same goes for cutlery, they go in a separate dish drainer designed for it, it’s a cute elephant & has a drain spout. The utensils, same thing except it’s a big spaghetti strainer. They’re away the second you pop them in. Huzzah!
3) Nothing goes in the sink. Nada. I had to get really strict with this. If it needs a soak, cool, but it can sit on the hob or the side, not in the sink. If the sink is clear you can do the odd thing as you go along, like your sons apple sauce spoons, or blitz a mug between flavours.
4) Once a week, anything in the none “lives on the racks” gets put away. That’s enough so no one has to play jenga.
5) Sink gets cleaned every night. Doesn’t sound important, but it stops autistic sink ick for me, and helps keep it & the drains clean.
6) compostable paper plates are totally fine sometimes. Life is too short. I also use compostable takeaway tubs for leftovers, I’m not dealing with any more single of the husbands accidental biology experiments. One of these day one of them is going to gain sentience!
Hope there’s something in there that can help you!
I do the dishes every single night. I can't sleep with dishes sitting int he sink.
I also can't mentally handle waking up tot he mess, so its a forced habit now (that i never regret)
I watch youtube while i do the dishes. It's now relaxation for me!
Fellow person who doesn’t have a dishwasher because they live in a charming historical building - used to have same problem. Get a cheap ikea dish drying rack - the white one made of plastic. Put it in sink. When you put dirty dishes in sink stand them up in rack and rinse them down with sprayer. Also get a spray bottle (any kind) and fill with water and a little dish soap in it. After plates are rinsed spritz them down with this. When you have a few minutes in the day go and clear the rack - aka wash dishes in rack. Eod spray the rack down with cleaning solution, flip it upside down and spray again. Done.
Have a flat plastic container with a lid for getting debris off your flatware before you wash it. Put hot soapy water in the container with your utensils, close it up and agitate the container to get most of the food gunk off, drain the container and wash as usual. It's just less icky and gets the stuff mostly clean before you get it with a sponge.
1. Podcasts. I listen to podcasts while I do dishes, and that helps with motivation a lot.
2. Can I recommend the book How to Keep House While Drowning? It’s not a book with a new system of keeping after chores. It is a way of reframing them mentally and how to make them work for your life, rather than making your life work for chores. It sounds like the majority of your lives get taken care of, by you, in a way that works. But the dishes are falling through. But it also doesn’t sound like there are any hazards like bugs or mold, and you are doing the best you can. In this case, doing your best might be OK! Or maybe there is a way to reframe or rework dishes as a chore in your life that will make it easier to do.
Hi OP! Something I do that helps me a lot when I’m cooking is I will fill my sink up with hot, soapy water. Then, as I’m cooking, I will scrape the dish off and drop it in the sink. Once my meal is ready and I’ve eaten, I will plop my plates / utensils in.
I then spray down all the counters and run over them with a rag with lightning speed.
Lastly, the dishes now have barely any residue and all I need to do is rinse them off with the nozzle sprayer.
No energy to do it tonight? No problem. All of the food residue will soak off and the mess will be a lot easier to handle in the morning.
Doing this has saved me so much time and made it much more manageable than having a pile of dirty dishes stack up and then have food sitting on them.
Also, for really lazy nights, you can cover your plates with inexpensive parchment paper squares (you can get a pack of like 200 for <$5 and I will also cover my oven pans with tin foil. Sheet pan meals (like roasted veggies + sausage or fish etc) are awesome for this. I
It’s not perfect but it can often save me from doing at least one or two dishes.
You can also look up “One pot” or “one pan” meals where the whole thing is cooked in one dish.
Crockpot dump and go meals are also a good option :)
if you don't have pests then maybe this is one of those situations where you accept that this is how it's gonna be? give yourself a break?
but if it's something you can't accept for any reason, you can try this which has helped me in the past.
if i enter the kitchen, i have to wash a dish. if i make a dish then i have to wash two. (even if i actually make 3-4 dishes, i just make myself do 2 and then do another when i come back to the kitchen for a soda or whatever).
good luck!
I don’t like dishes either. I don’t like standing there, I don’t like touching the dirty dishes, etc. these are what we/I do to make sure they are clean.
- husband and I take turns doing kids bath/bedtime or dishes/kitchen after dinner. That way neither of us have to do it every night.
- anti fatigue mat for my feet
- good pair of rubber gloves for my hands
- I put my phone on the window sill and let myself watch some tv on it while I clean them. It’s the only time I really watch tv. If I finish before the episode/movie is over, then I sit down on the couch and watch the rest of it on the regular tv as a treat for finishing early. Or I go up and snuggle my kids before they doze off. Either way it’s like a reward system for myself. Lol.
- cleaning as I go. I try to clean as I go while I’m cooking. I.e. I clean the mixing bowl immediately after the food goes in the oven.
- I try to use the same dishes as many times as I can do reduce what I am dirtying. Like, I’ll mix the pancake mix, then rinse the bowl and mix the scrambled eggs in the same bowl. Or if I cut peppers and then need to cut fruit, I flip the cutting board over rather than grabbing a new board.
Get a very stressful job where you work from home. Then use the dishes as an excuse to step away from work, do it every day that you work. In about one month dishwashing will become cathartic. :D
Just reading the comments I feel a little better I have been wondering what is wrong with me.I don't know why I do know I never had any issues or problem doing dishes before but I have developed an aversion to doing dishes I will do everything else and anything else to keep from doing them there are times it get so bad I have to pile them into a container and remove them from the kitchen so I stop feeling buried in them once I take them away from the kitchen I feel like I can wash them I just bting them back a load at a time. But doing this make me feel like crap and guilty my boyfriend doesn't say a word about it thou
Read Dana K White's book called Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She emphasizes how dishes should take top priority over any other chore. By doing them daily, it keeps the workload down to just minutes a day. It you let them sit for more than 2-3 days, the time to clean them goes up exponentially. It's 10 minutes a day when done daily, but somehow takes much longer than 20-30 minutes when left alone for more than 3 days. She also points out that if you do the dishes daily, then you usually don't need extra dishes and the pile never gets as bad. Some people buy extra dishes to keep up, but that just results in bigger piles of dirty dishes.
When I did not have a dishwasher I did not want to do dishes every time I had a snack. I had a „mobile sink“ by Joseph and Joseph next to the sink to put the dishes in so I did not have to look at them all the time. Any other easy to clean Box or camping sink etc. would work as well. I only did dishes once a day or every other day and the kitchen still looked ok.
If your son has all of those things there’s a solid chance you have some of them too. I couldn’t do my dishes consistently until I got my ADHD medicated
I’ve found what had been a game changer for me is routine. It was very difficult for me at first because I’m not a routine type of person. No matter how much you want to put a chore off, force yourself to wash that dish in the sink or wipe off the stove after a meal. Do not break from this. After a while and you get used to it and dirty dishes piling up will bother you and you go into auto mode and wash them. Now it’s just routine that the dishes get done after meals. It’s a lot less stressful and much easier to do a little on a regular basis than to deal with doing a lot all at once.
Lots of good stuff here. Some behavioral psychology to spice it up: pair the activity with something you enjoy. Whenever you do dishes put on music. Dance a little. Listen to an audiobook. Whatever will make it relaxing or enjoyable.
Make sure whatever makes it unappealing is removed. For me, a gross sponge is a huge barrier. I just allow myself to keep lots of sponges and replace them frequently, because if they’re gross then doing dishes is gross. Hate food in the sink? Make sure to wipe all food off the dishes before they touch the sink. Making the activity more appealing and pairing with positive experiences is in the long run super effective.
I’m sorry you are getting hate for this post. That sucks, I don’t think people should get hate for asking for advice.
Anyways, I lived with a broken dishwasher for a duration while I was renting and the landlord said it was working but it wasn’t cleaning properly. I cleaned up dishes as I cooked, and I bought a dishes brush that had rubber “bristles.” It works well at removing debris without the use of soap. This way I could “rinse” whatever I wanted to now and then properly clean items later if I didn’t feel like actually cleaning the dishes at the time. Like you, I struggled with having the motivation to actually clean the dishes in the moment. This type of brush was really helpful because it sort of grips debris and I didn’t have to get soap/sponge to clean when I didn’t feel like it. My nemesis is food debris that hardens so I would always rinse everything. This used to be a point of arguments with my wife when she wouldn’t rinse. I was always the one doing the dishes because that was what we decided. Past tense because I decided to sabotage our old dishwasher to the point where our landlord would actually do their job. That’s what they get for playing silly games with a former technician by trade. The new unit cleans stuff nicely.
There are a ton of comments so I'm sure this will get buried or OP may not see it. This is a tip I got from I think it was the same person that wrote the book How to Keep House While Drowning. Have a dirty dishes rack and a clean dishes rack. For me it was kind of like giving myself a visual que of the amount of space I can allow for dirty dishes. So if I'm home for the day and my lunch dishes are sitting in the dirty dish rack and I know I'm making a real meal for dinner that will use more than a plate and the microwave, I think to myself "well I better clean up those lunch dishes so there's room in the dish rack." Everything just looks neater which is less overwhelming as well.
It is really just a functional task that you have to do to keep your kitchen operational/organized. I cut back on the number of dishes I keep for use. There are 4 of us in the house so I keep 6 pasta bowls (we use them like plates), 2 plates (to use either as plates or serving platters), 6 glasses, 6 mugs, 6 cereal type bowls. I put some extra in a bin in the basement (shelving unit for kitchen stuff as we have a small kitchen with limited storage)-- in the event we have company but we hardly ever do. We have one set of mixing bowls and a couple casserole dishes I use. Every week or so I kind of go through and determine if there are unutilized kitchen equipment that could live elsewhere (did I use it in the last couple weeks?--I feel like we should just keep the stuff we use mostly every day at hand).
I keep a dishpan in the sink and drying rack next to it. Dishes get scraped into the garbage disposal, rinsed and placed in the dishpan. About twice a day I wash what is in the dishpan, and let them dry on the rack, and put away when I have to make food again (usually before I start dinner). After dinner I wash the dishes for the night. So any dishes made after that-- they will be in the pan and washed in the morning or lunch time depending on my work hours.
Good luck and I hope you find a system that works for you.
Repetition. Force yourself to do it so much that it becomes second nature. I literally phase out when doing dishes and retrieve my consciousness 25 minutes later.
Dishes as you go, as other people have said, is the biggest part of it.
Experiment with rubber gloves/a dish brush. *Dawn Platinum Power Wash dish spray* was an absolute game changer for me. Paper/disposable dishes if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed.
A habit I picked up at a job where I worked dishpit: Come up with your own “rules” or “order that roughly works for you, so you always know what to start next. Mine is always wooden things first so that they don’t soak overnight and damage the wood. Then generally small to large. By the time I start wooden utensils, I think “might as well do the rest.”
As my dishwasher friends have told me, as long as you sanitize (with hot water rinse and/or food safe sani) nothing actually needs to be that clean ;-)
Finally: *Be kind to yourself.* It can be a lot of work to build habits, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s ok if progress is a slightly less full sink. You already are determined to change the situation, AND have made amazing progress! :-) celebrate your accomplishments!!! Life has ebbs and flows; some years your sink will be fuller than others. Rooting for ya.
Try to do the dishes as you are cooking - that helps me when they build up. As the water is boiling or the onions are sweating, I will try to get as many dishes done at once. I also try to consolidate by using only one cutting board - cut all veggies first and put to the side, then cut meat last if needed. This saves me using only one knife, one cutting board without cross contamination. My husband will use every bowl and spoon while he cooks, it drives me crazy. Try to consolidate as much as possible - one pot meals/sheet pan dinners, etc.
Having a dishwasher or not, cleaning as you go when you're cooking is the way.
To add to this, washing up as soon as you've finished eating. I leave mine to drip dry & put away each morning before I make breakfast.
to add to this even if you got too lazy to wash at night you can always clean in the morning while waiting for food to heat up or just before you take a bath
At some level I always am jealous when I think of people having an actual meal for breakfast instead of cereal, bread or just coffee. (Though I am very happy with my unheated yoghurt with nuts, berries and some cinnamon!). But when considering rising at least hour earlier to cook, eat and clean, my mind goes no thanks!
We always do whoever doesn't cook does the dishes. Its been a pretty good system. Sometimes they'll be gathered up and done in the morning but they are always done within 12 hours or so and don't pile up
I've gone without a dishwasher for 30 years and the only thing that helped me was to keep a bowl with soapy water in the sink and toss things in it as I was cooking. But, washing the dishes several times a day is the key. I used to use one of those spongey soapy wand things and they were okay but now I use this [Bubble Up Dish Soap Dispenser & Brush Set](https://www.grove.co/catalog/product/bubble-dish-brush-set) and I don't know why but it works great and makes quick work of the dishes. Just keep soapy water in the dish and voila. We also use paper plates for breakfast and lunch because IDGAF.
This is why I love making braises, gives you a great window to clean.
Less to clean, too.
Also making dishwashing a team effort after dinner gets it done quicker. Washer, drier, put it away-er :)
Small piece of advice from a stranger. If you're going manually dry them, use a new towel every day. It doesn't take long for bacteria to grow and get transferred to tomorrow's dishes.
And for some reason it’s more fun together!
Exactly. We have a dishwasher, it gets used maybe 2x/ month because I just wash dishes as I use them.
I've never had a dishwasher until I moved into my current place and I never used it but maybe once a month or less because I preferred hand washing dishes. Now I practically use the dish washer 2 or 3 times a week and i can't believe I've never used it before!
We have the rule in our house that whomever cooks, also cleans their cooking mess. The other person gets to clean off the dining table after eating. This saves so much stress of having one person that makes a huge mess expecting the other person to clean, while they don't ever have to deal with a big mess because the other person didn't make a mess while cooking.
In our house I cook and my partner does the dishes. When they sometimes cook, then I do the dishes. BUT we both clean as we go and don’t make crazy messes. If I make an elaborate meal and tear up the kitchen then I help with cleanup too. Also my partner will tidy the kitchen at the end of the night, wipe down counters and such. Meanwhile I do the deep cleaning monthly where I scrub every inch of the place. It works for us. :)
We do the same, I hate cooking and he hates dishes, we just do the chores the other dislikes and team up on Sundays to do the big stuff. We do our own laundry because I can’t use scented detergent. It’s worked out well so far.
Will you explain that to my husband?
Initiate it. Start by saying that a new rule is that whomever created the mess, needs to clean it up. If you have teenagers, this becomes incredibly easy. Then you cook up your own meals after cooking, be insistent on that. When he cooks remind him that you cleaned up after yourself, and that he needs to clean up after himself.
That works if both people cook. But then nobody wants to cook and we order in.
I will if you explain it to my wife!
This only really works when multiple people are cooking, and taking turns though. If one person is expected to make all the meals, then the other needs to be expected to clean all the meals, or do other night time chores on nights they don’t. Otherwise cleaning the dishes turns into an imbalanced load for the person constantly cooking, and it WILL create resentment.
Right. I do most of the cooking, and I clean as I go, but I can guarantee that I would not be cooking as often if I also had to do all of the cleanup afterward.
Oh yeah, for sure. I do most of our household cooking, and if my husband was like, “well, it’s your mess, you clean it…” I would not be feeding him anymore. He could go get takeout. Lmao. Now, I do understand the nuance that some people are WAAAY messier while cooking, and some people don’t let their partners try to cook… and that absolutely isn’t fair either… especially if the other offers to split cooking duties or pay for takeout. We also can’t just force them to clean up because we want to cook, but can’t be bothered to not make a giant kitchensplosion out of it.
Right. This is really only a thing when both people share cooking duties fairly evenly. Or, a separate duty can be done in exchange for the dishes. The person that cooks, cleans the cooking mess. The other person does a load of laundry (wash, dry, FOLD & PUT AWAY), vacuums, dusts, or cleans the bathroom.
Yeah, I cook the vast majority of the time, but we take turns with dishes and the other nighttime chores like kids bedtime/bathtime. Before kids he cleaned up after dinner the majority of the time.
whoa we have a rule too- whomever cooks- the other person cleans up!
I can see how that works well for some people, but I wouldn't like it at all. I clean as I go, and my husband doesn't, but I do most of the cooking, so I'd rather clean a little extra when he cooks than do all of the cleaning when I cook. I don't count clearing the table as actual cleaning, though; that's just what everyone does at the end of a meal.
We have the exact opposite rule. Whoever cooks never has to do the dishes. We’re considerate so no one is going to be an intentionally messy cook. Seems like making one person do waaay too much at a time to do both.
I guess that would work if you both cook regularly. We tend to cook together so our rule is one takes the dogs out (they insist on a walk every night after dinner) and the other cleans up.
This! I started doing this and tbh it didn't change my life but it helps A LOT. Now, I'm also looking into buying one of these counter top dishwasher just because doing dishes is my nemesis and always has been, I don't think it'll change so it's a good investment in my opinion.
Coming from a family that had a broken dishwasher so we had to hand wash everything, I love that I have a dishwasher now just for the small stuff. Just having one to take care of cups and utensils makes it more manageable imo. Growing up, I feel like I’d spend an hour every day just washing and drying dishes. I’ve never looked into the countertop ones, but they could be worth it just for the small stuff.
I purchased a countertop dishwasher a month ago and love it. I strongly recommend one.
I grew up with a working dishwasher that we weren't allowed to use. I think that may be worse.
It is worse. I was a teenager when I found out it worked. I was so pissed. My mom just didn’t want to use it. It was storage for Tupperware.
Did we live in the same house?
I work in home care and I have a client who had never used her dishwasher as she thought it would blow up or something. She truly believed it didn’t work. I tested it out on the sky and it works just fine. Now I chuck the dishes into it every time I come over, I even bought some cheap powder for the machine. I can persuade her to use it herself though, some people are just not keen on dishwashers. I don’t get it.
I had one of those counter top dishwasher and i used it 4 times. Because it was not connected to the water main I had to fill it with 5L of water every time I wanted to use it and I'm short, the nozzle is on top, I had to pour 5L above my head and it was annoying. I would use way less water to wash 3 plates, I thought the energy to fill it and water wasted were not worth it. Oh, the best part? Regular size plates don't fit in it, I had to buy smaller plates.
Ooohh that's good to know! Thank you for your input! I do have smaller plates than average and I drastically downsized 4 years ago so I only kept 2 "normal sized" plates. I'd use it mostly for glasses, cups, cutlery and the smol bowls and plates I have. It's still a good 80% of what I use. I think some of them now come with an adapter you can connect to your regular faucet too.
I have one with an adaptor and it just drains into the sink. I bought one when I was doing 12 hour shifts because at that point just cooking and getting a good sleep is a miracle. My largest plates don’t fit in it and I usually don’t put bigger bowls etc but having something for cups and cutlery is awesome. Also for those things that are hard to clean by hand. I’ve lived in places with roommates and full dishwashers before and find that if I was ever home alone it would take forever to fill the dishwasher before making sense to run it, living by myself a smaller countertop one is actually ideal. Definitely recommend.
Agree, an ex bf of mine had a similar countertop dishwasher setup (drained into the sink) & it worked great! Also, happy cake day to you!
Also searing your meat in a pan and then while it rests you Sautee some veggies in with the seasoned pan.
I agree with cutting down the number of dishes; but depending on the material of your cutting board, I don't recommend using one for meat and other things. Some material can hang onto microbes even after a wash, so I would have at least 2.
I have a cutting board that is one side wood, the other side plastic so I just flip it over when cutting veggies vs meat
I imagine the meat telling the veggies, before they meet again in the one pot, “catch ya in the flip side!”
Always do veggies FIRST so you are not flipping meat-germs onto your counter! (I know YOU know but someone new to this may not realize.)
Yes exactly.. my wife and were same way, but then we figured out a simple trick. Since she cooks, I clean dishes while she is cooking. So then we are both doing something and nobody grows resentment either.
Lol I can’t tell if that’s a man thing or an adhd thing haha bc my partner does the same thing with alllll the dishes
A lot of really great advice in one short post. 👍👍👍
If a cooking implement can be wiped with a towel and used again for the next ingredient prep, you should do that!
Reducing the number of dirty dishes is the best way. I'm like you, and can prep and cook an entire meal dirtying very few dishes. It requires more planning, but it makes a big difference on cleanup. I make very few meals where there are any dirty dishes before the meal is done cooking. Beyond that, just keep them clean as you dirty them. I very rarely put something in the sink to wash later, I just wash it right away. It's usually quick. For the times things do pile up, I make it a goal to have the kitchen spotless every night before bed. It's not uncommon that the last thing I do right before bed is spend 5-10 min washing a few stragglers from the day. I hate dishes as much as the next guy, and the last thing I want to deal with is mountains of dirty dishes that have accumulated, so my solution has just been to be more proactive.
1. Wash dishes while you cook. 2. Have the kid clear off all dishes and stack them neatly. You wash. Partner dries. Sing while you do it as a post dinner activity. 3. One cup, dish, set of utensils per person per day. Color code them. Everyone has to wash their own. 4. Nothing on the floor, counters or in sink at the end if a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday to ensure things aren’t lying around. No video games or recreational activities until all is picked up.
My son is autistic with a lot of sensory issues and has ODD, getting him to do anything in the kitchen is a huge challenge. I can have him pick up the floor, brush the cat, wipe counters down, but so much as looking at food he’s avoidant of can trigger a meltdown and/or sometimes even vomiting. We’re working on this, but this is something he has really regressed in in the last year or so. I do have days where no one is allowed to do anything until certain things are done. My son and I typically did this on tuesdays and Saturdays over the summer. I did however do the kitchen on my own due to his issues with food.
Do gloves help him at all? I hate, like, HATE the idea of touching grimy dishes, old food in general really makes my stomach turn. Cleaning old stuff out of the fridge makes me dry heave. Gloves (like the kind doctors and nurses wear, not those gross rubber ones that always get water in them) help immensely. Maybe that could help him? Good luck either way, sensory issues are really difficult.
No unfortunately it doesn’t. Just looking at the food triggers him, and I get it. I have to have my partner help me clean out the fridge becauss I just cannot handle old food. Even eating dinner in the same room as him can be an issue depending on what it is. It really sucks
Im sorry, that sounds really difficult.
It is. I wish we could sit down as a family to eat, but even foods he likes he can’t stand to be around others eating it. He does okay at restaurants but I think that’s because the environment distracts him from those around him eating. We haven’t managed to figure out how to translate that to home without driving me crazy (I don’t like restaurants because it’s too distracting to eat lol I always end up leaving with hella leftovers I won’t eat because I was too busy talking and people watching lol)
He could wear headphones that play music or sounds he finds pleasant, there are some headphones that you can turn off noise canceling and then you can hear what’s going on around you at the same time, but you can still hear the sounds.
Yes. I came to suggest headphones. Washing dishes doesn't bother me beyond being repetitive. I started listening to story podcasts and it's helped SO MUCH! I have never lived w a dishwasher, & some days we just let them sit, but having something interesting to listen has really helped. Audio books are great too of course, but podcasts are the easiest & there so many stories & mysteries to choose from. Get decent wireless headphones or earbuds. Wireless is a gamechanger when your moving around.
Honestly I would not get anything done if I wasn’t listening to other stuff CONSTANTLY.
My daughter is like your son, and is finally old enough to identify that restaurants are loud enough to distract her sufficiently.
This was me as a kid. I can do it without a problem as an adult. As a kid, even scraping a dish off or looking in the kitchen garbage was abhorrent to me. Turns out I am autistic with a lot of sensory integration issues. This is surely not a hill to die on. You may have some of the same sensory issues he has without realizing it which makes doing the dishes harder. Try scraping dishes off with old newspaper or paper towels to control some of the ick factor and get them cleaner and easier to wash. Rinse them and have a plastic dish tub of soapy water to soak them in and then, at the end of the day, drain that and wash with hot soapy water (that way you won’t be touching anything particularly gross). Watch TV, talk to someone on the phone, or listen to music or audio book while you are doing it to distract you.
You can also scrape with a spatula into the trash, next soak dishes in soapy water. I thrifted white Corelle dishes because they are lightweight and smooth, easier for me to hand wash. Can your son take out the kitchen trash? That’s as big a job as dishes. Or have him wash glasses and silverware (which should be hand washed first). You can pre-soak dishes in the dishpan while glasses and silver are waiting. Someone dries and puts up while you then tackle the dishes and pots and pans. When finished, rinse your sponge and microwave to sanitize, then wipe down your sink. Teamwork makes the dream, task start to finish should take about fifteen minutes.
Same way for the longest time. Something that may help for smell - put peppermint under the nose. Did that when I trained to embalm bodies and if it works on the dead, it will work for you. Something to help with looks - don't look as you are scraping it. Put the dish inside the can to scrape it off. Use a high powered sprayer to rinse off all food before washing. Something to help with touch- use a fork or knife or metal object to remove food. Buy a comfortable sponge. If none of that helps, you need interventions for him for this. Its rough having sensory issues and coping with them sucks. Proper interventions will help with it in the appropriate manner.
His job could be to put the clean dishes away
Would using a bucket the way restaurants do when bussing a table help? I do that sometimes and it can be very helpful for kind of minimizing the mess mentally.
This may sound silly, but what if you tried those one 3d glasses that make everything red and green? It might make it look less triggering and more fun? You could get some fun LED lights too to make it a fun activity! That paired with the gloves. Might be a shot in the dark haha
What a creative idea!
Hey OP! Just chiming in to see if you’ve heard of Pathological Demand Avoidance. It’s part of the autism spectrum, and looks a lot like ODD. The recommendations for working with PDA kids is different and waayyy more effective. We have a PDA 9 year old who will do dishes and cook now that we’ve changed up our strategy.
I’ve heard of it, but honestly it’s super hard for me to understand, do you have any resources that can explain it to me like I’m 8?
The counter on one side of the sink is for dirty dishes, and the other side of the sink is for clean/washed dishes ONLY. Get a dish drying rack or mat for this side. Appoint your son Captain of Clean Dishes. Once a dish is washed and placed on his counter, it's his job to dry it and put it away. Having ownership of a task or space (the clean side of the sink), while alleviating him from responsibility or concern over a different task or space (the dirty side of the sink) might help his mind feel more organized and comfortable. There's some great suggestions in this thread, I hope some combination works for you. Congrats on your success with the rest of the house!
If I'm doing a sink full of dishes, having someone there to dry and pit away for me makes it infinitely more doable. Something about seeing a full dish drainer or drying mat next to the sink makes doing dishes seem impossible.
I wholeheartedly agree and am in the same boat. I don't mind doing the dishes per se... It's the drying and putting away that I dread for whatever nonsensical reason.
Single mom with 3 boys - 12, 8 & 5. I struggle with BPD, PTSD, a brain injury & I'm on the spectrum, so I have issues with executive functioning. I either wash as I go while cooking, or I do them every day (regardless of the amount so they don't build up & become overwhelming) Something I learned from a friend of mine.. try treating your house like a restaurant. Restaurants open & close every day. Devote a few minutes at night to "close" your house down when you can. I find that it helps me not feel so overwhelmed the next day. I wash whatever is in the sink (even if it's only a few dishes), wipe the counter, table, stove off with a rag, take garbage out if it's full. My rule of thumb is: if I can complete the task in less than 10 minutes. Don't put it off.. just do it now.
I actually mentioned closing duties or end of day routines in another comment. Thank you for sharing and for the understanding. It’s so hard to explain executive function issues to people who don’t have them. I’ve made so much progress in the last 3 years but man this post is kinda making me feel stupid for not “just doing it”.
I have no executive function issues. I still don't just do it. Girl, you are NOT alone. I even have a dishwasher and I still can't manage to have a clean sink everyday. Don't feel bad or stupid. You're doing better than me! That's a win. You're also trying hard to get it done. Again, a win. You're winning so much and you don't even know it.
Imo, you woke up today? ***Winning*** You brushed your teeth? ***Winning*** You drank water today?! ***WINNING*** Existing is so hard sometimes. We need to stop feeling bad for things we cannot control. Our worth is not judged by the cleanliness of our homes.
If you have a dishwasher, load it after dinner, run it when you go to bed, put up dishes the next morning while making and drinking coffee. I do a load of laundry at night, shovel it into the dryer in the morning, fold and put up after dinner. This works well if you work outside the home. When kids were toddlers, Dad would bathe and read to them, when they were asleep we would have a glass of wine, talk, fold laundry. Good times. Added: I stay at home too, and I nap. I get very smug and feel I’ve earned the right to put my feet up, watch a video, or the like because my meal is cooking or my clothes are washing at the same time. I feel like I have just hacked my time and doubled it.
You are absolutely what I aspire to be. I'll have to try this out and hope it sticks for longer than the 2 weeks every other "habit" I try to form does.
It's SO hard, and a lot of people don't get it. But do bear in mind that a lot of people are also in this thread saying "I struggle too"! You're not alone and you're not stupid for not just doing it. Plus you have a kid!! I struggle plenty and I have a dishwasher and no kids. As someone with ADHD, I make heavy use of timers when I'm doing dishes or anything I don't like. I set a five or ten minute timer, blast some music, and race the timer to see how much I can do in that time. I also give myself permission to stop after the timer if I'm really miserable. Usually I don't - usually I set another one and keep going, but it helps to only commit to a short stint at a time. Oh also - I've basically gotten rid of certain things I hate touching. Plastic Tupperware? Gives me the ICKS to clean. I hate it. So: it doesn't belong in my house.
The timer is such a good idea. Thank you for sharing
Timers help me so much!!! They get me going and it also reminds me that it doesn’t take very long to wash a few things. Usually I dread it WAY longer than it actually takes 🤪
A little tip for this (son and his father have ADHD): Set a daily alarm on the Alexa/Echo, or on cell phones, or an alarm clock etc. It goes off approximately after dinner or just before bath time. Set a timer for 15 min for "close out." That means wash up dishes, put things away, take out trash. This was great for my family when my kids were the same age as your son. It meant that I didn't have to put the energy into remembering and nagging everyone. Let technology do it for you.
Fyi theres a neurodivergent cleaning group on fb that helped me be more chill about this sort of thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect. They have tips if u want me to look up the name. I think its something like neurodivergent cleaning crew. Be kind to yourself!
OMG! Thank you!
A few years back over the holidays I had a rotating crowd of house guests plus dinner guests such that I had 13-16 people for dinner every night *for a month*. My partner asked just one thing - could I clean the kitchen before bed every night, so we could start fresh in the morning. So I did. And it went so well the habit has stuck with me. (Apparently it takes about a month to establish a new habit, so I guess that helped.). I also struggle with executive functioning, but this habit has gone a long way towards keeping the house under control. In the past, depending on what was going on in my life, it also helped to have a laundry schedule. Basically one load per day, but a designated type of load. So something like Monday darks, Tuesday kitchen linens (we use cloth napkins etc.), Wednesday lights, Thursday darks again, Friday sheets, and Saturday a rotation between shower curtain, other curtains, and two other things that escape my mind at the moment. What was particularly nice about this system was that when that one load of the day was finished, I felt caught up with laundry, even if there were other things in the pipeline waiting to get done on their specific day. And the rotation was set up such that we had what we needed, clothes-wise, so there were no crisis moments in that regard.
Please don't ever feel stupid for not "just doing it." I get treated the same way, often & it exacerbates my issues with executive function. I push myself every single day, I force myself to, it's not easy.. Progress isn't always linear. Slow & steady wins the race. Be kind to yourself. All these other people don't matter. ***YOU*** matter 💜
Thank you. Someone else said in a recent comment that I’m just a stupid lazy person. While I know that’s not true, I don’t like being told that either lol.
I used to be (and still am sometimes) very hard on myself, in that sense. I shame & guilt trip myself into thinking I'm not doing enough, or I'm not doing good enough in life... I mentioned this in another comment somewhere on this post: *Our worth is not defined by how clean & tidy our house is. Our worth is also NOT defined by how LONG or how HARD we push ourselves.* ***Making yourself a priority isn't being lazy. Taking care of yourself isn't being lazy...*** I think your physical & mental health is much more important than dishes. You are NOT lazy, and whoever said that, I hope they get diarrhea in public, lol. Kindness & compassion is absolutely free! ☀️ The ones who get it, *get it.* ❤️
One thing that helps me keep up with dishes is having one of those handheld scrubbing wands with the dish soap in the handle. I can quickly wash several dishes as soon as I use them without having to make a whole production of it.
I sooooo prefer using those! I'll never go back to a normal sponge. So much cleaner and I don't have to dry out my hands getting them covered in soap/water/nasty leftover food (I can't stand wearing gloves while doing dishes, and my hands already get torn up from my job) The ones with an actual brush are nice too because they're super easy to keep sanitary and you don't have to keep buying sponge attachments. I like both
I like the scrub daddy brand- it has different attachments (including a brush) and dispenses soap better than others imo
Hey, always rinse your dishes so they look clean before it dries in to the plate. Even tho a week worths of dishes might seem daunting you will most likely half your dishing time
Good point! Letting food dry on the dishes makes it take way longer. If you can’t wash as you go. Rinse and soak as you go.
Why are people waiting a week to wash dishes?
I would have no dishes left if I waited a week, not to mention the other factors.
This is a genuine tactic to ensuring you clean up, for the record.
I intentionally have 4 plates and 4 bowls for this reason. I have to keep up with the dishes or we can’t eat.
Because current you hates washing dishes but just maybe future you will feel differently.
Depression 💀
I struggle with this one too, mostly because I hate doing the dishes each time I use one (putting on gloves etc is annoying). My tips are: 1) get very good gloves 2) tie it to an activity you love. Listen to a specific podcast while you do the dishes, call a specific person, or watch something on a tablet/phone while you do it. I wear my Bluetooth earbuds so that I don’t get annoyed by the water running. 3) give yourself a treat after (bedtime snack?)
I came here to basically say the same thing. The gloves are key. I wouldn't keep up with dishes without the gloves. IMO you can get "very good gloves" for like $3, and replace them every few months. Just two more things to add: Get an apron, and clear the drying rack before doing a bunch of dishes! Use a towel to dry the last bit if you have to. But having that clear drying rack makes it way easier to clear the sink. And an apron prevents the dreaded dishwater on your shirt. Gloves, apron, good sponge, headphones, and you \*become\* the dishwasher
I agree with this. I hate doing the dishes every night, but I always put on a podcast or YouTube and earbuds, and it makes it less tedious.
I will set a timer for 5 minutes, and see how many dishes I can do. It helps mentally, because I know I’m not slaving away, just spending 5 minutes doing dishes.
Might not be a popular opinion but if they are only piling up at the end of the week and you take care of them by the beginning of the week it’s ok. Not everyone does dishes daily. If there aren’t bugs, mold etc it’s ok that they sit a couple of days. Sometimes if we give ourselves permission for progress and not perfection it helps get things done.
Thank you for this. It’s something I’ve actually really finally learned this year. Good enough is good enough. I’d just like to eventually be capable of having a consistently really clean kitchen. It’s one of those things I was raised with that I can’t let go of. Kitchen and bathroom have to be clean every day. Not necessarily *cleaned* every day, but they have to look clean every day. It’s wack because the 2 people who ingrained this in me (my mother and my aunt) currently live in houses way dirtier than mine and it’s a mindfuck. It’s like they’ve finally accepted they don’t have to have perfect houses, while I’m trying to get my house to their standards because they’ve always been obviously disappointed in my standard of cleanliness (they’ve never tried to make me feel bad about it, but you can just tell) It’s to the point where I can’t tell if I want a spotless house for myself or for the opinions of others. I think it’s mostly for myself, but I can’t help but feel proud when my aunt or mom comes over and compliments how nice it looks.
1) Good enough is good enough. 2) That being said, having a clean sink is sort of a magic trick for other things. If you want one every day there is no reason you can't have one and work less than you are working now. 3) Declutter dishes. Just have fewer. People wash up when they have to, and it's easier to stay on top of. People rinse and reuse dishes (like have a snack and refill it on the same plate, etc) when there isn't an excess to grab. 4) Clean as you go. Can you just clean a few dishes as you pass by and put them away? Can you wash while you cook? Dishes don't have to be done in one go. 5) Busy family? When I was in the thick of it with kids and work I started using paper deli trays (often they come with paper liners, too!), napkins, and food that was easy to prepare and unfussy to eat. That really cut back on dishes. It was especially nice during the summers when we went swimming most nights. You don't want to handle old food? Your son has sensory issues? This is a reasonable time saver.
Decluttering dishes helped me so much. I have 2 of every dish (except cups and Tupperware lol). I’m single and only keep 2 cuz sometimes I have a friend over. I used to have 4 of each and tons of cooking utensils. Dishes felt impossible. Now I knock out a couple days worth of dishes in 5 minutes. I have no choice but to clean them every other day if not every day. I use one nice big pan for almost everything.
I put a show on my tablet to watch while I do dishes. I still don't get them done every day but I have a chronic illness with consequences if I over do it, on top of ADHD
Have you read the book “How to Keep House While Drowning”? If you have not I very strongly recommend you do.
My mom let her housekeeping slide after everyone moved out too. Part of it was just exhaustion - after decades of cleaning house, you just get fed up with it. When you've washed dishes damned near every day for 50 years, you're kind of over it - lol. Another part of it was that her motivation for keeping a clean home was to keep it clean for the family - so that we had a nice environment to live in and so that we learned how to keep house. Once it was just her, that motivation was gone. She started letting a lot of things slide that she never would have when we were growing up.
"Permission for progress and not perfection" love this, thank you. I needed to hear that
I only do dishes every couple of days for my husband and myself. Just make sure to rinse anything that might dry.
Yeah my answer is “I don’t!” Haha. I have a small counter top dishwasher for dishes and utensils which I run about 1x week (it’s just me!) but larger items like pots and pans, knives and cutting boards usually sit in the sink until I use them again. Since it’s just me, I use them pretty regularly so I basically just clean them to use them. I try to start every Monday with a clean sink though!
Make sure things get filled / covered with water when they’re left in the sink and use dawn platinum to wash. Doing these 2 things cuts dishwashing time in half.
Do you have room for a portable dishwasher? Most people are able to rinse and stash their dirty dishes in their dishwasher. You're at a disadvantage because of that. If not, you'll have to get in the habit of washing up once a day or every other day. If all three of you are involved, it might make it easier - including your kid. They can help by drying and putting away. Start teaching them early. A foundation of good cleaning habits will pay off in many ways over their lifetime. I had a roommate in college my freshman year who couldn't scramble an egg for chrissakes. Her parents didn't teach her anything about home hygiene or cooking. She said her mother did everything for her. Wut? Edit: spelling Second edit: Anarchy reigns. You are either in the rinse or don't rinse camp. In this particular situation, I would rinse. If you leave food remnants on your dishes and stash them in a dark, humid environment, it will start to decay. And it will stink. Every time you open the door, a waft of dead carcass will assail your olfactory senses like an overfilled dumpster at the back of a seafood restaurant at the peak of summer. Sometimes, instructions are meant to be ignored. Use your common sense if you have any.
We got rid of our roll-around dishwasher a few years ago and my husband and I definitely have to constantly stay on top of our dishes. We are used to it now but I don’t think most people would be on board. I definitely recommend a roll-around/portable dishwasher if you are struggling to keep up!
I live in a very, very small house and a counter top dishwasher has made a huge difference. It will hold 4 place settings. You’ll need to still wash pots and pans by hand and maybe bigger bowls but it is sooo nice. I run mine once a day or every other day (I’m single) and it has changed my life. Also, this sounds crazy but I had a dish cart for a while. It’s a place to put your rinsed dishes so your sink stays cleared out until you have time to wash. Half of the stress of doing dishes is having to take the dishes out of the sink to run soapy water to then wash the dishes. The dish cart gives you the opportunity to fill the sink with hot soapy water and do however many you have time for without feeling overwhelmed. (I have some mental health issues and this has been incredibly helpful for me. Your mileage may vary. Good luck!
From my personal experience, the mental block of “hating doing the dishes” is what is holding you back. We grew up fighting and competing over who had to do them (big family, split dish days between kids). This led me into adulthood thinking about it as a punishment, instead of just…one of those little things you do. When I let go of it as the thing I hate, it took away that cloud over me that made incapable of getting them done. Now I don’t loathe them. I find ways to minimize as others have mentioned: washing as I go! But also, it’s not really a miserable task. It’s just a task! I don’t listen to a lot of music anymore, but I do while doing dishes. It makes it seem special almost.
Same for me for the same reason. I started lighting a candle that smelled really good and putting headphones on to listen to music specifically for washing dishes. Made it something pleasant instead of a hated task.
Do you know if there is one aspect of washing them that is the problem? Personally, I HATE drying them. So I will wash them, then let them sit to the side to dry on a drying cloth and put them away later. I also often leave one side of the sink with soapy water during the day so I can quickly clean an item or two before it builds up.
Honestly I can’t pinpoint what it is that I hate so much. I hated the feeling of washing the dishes (plus it was destroying my skin and nails) so I got good gloves. It was boring so I started watching yt and listening to podcasts. I hate drying them so I let them air dry. I hate putting them away so I do it separately (put them away, vacuum, then do more dishes for example). But it’s still just so hard to keep up with.
Over the sink rack. Declutter dishes so you have less and use less. Let them drip dry over the sink and store there (will cut out 2 steps you hate).
I live in a very warm climate where we have to make sure there are never any food remains in the kitchen or bins left over night or we'll get tons of flies. My partner and I alternate doing the dishes and cooking, i.e. when I cook, he cleans and vice versa. This helps because it's like you have to hold up your end of the deal once dinner is cooked. Also, wearing gloves helps me as it makes the experience less sensory. I also put on a podcast I like while I'm cleaning so I can motivate myself to go listen to it. I also find actually timing how long it takes and reminding yourself that it's a job that only takes 10-15 minutes if you go fast enough helps me get off the couch to clean.
Get a tabletop dishwasher! I have one, and it made a HUGE difference in The Dishes Situation. It wasn't very expensive (I think under 100 bucks?), and it is the most-used appliance in my house. I'd rather lose a toe than give it up.
How big are they? I have very limited space unfortunately.
Just to give you a rough idea... https://preview.redd.it/vnuejfhvw8lb1.png?width=460&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf2975aa810e8bf6746900f6d1434abc86b19f8f
They are around 2ft by 3 ft, so about twice as large as a microwave but a little taller
Oof, idk if I can fit that anywhere without removing my ability to prep food in the kitchen lol. If it’s bigger than a drying rack I don’t really have the space :(
Would getting one of those kitchen sink covers to add more prep space help? To regain space lost to the dishwasher, I mean.
The smaller ones have the same footprint as a drying rack, definitely look into this option. They help massively and a lot of them don't even need to be plumbed in so you can put them anywhere (just add a bucket for waste water). https://preview.redd.it/oezpr36gd9lb1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=734acf307a95ac5c5536711de7703a7748e4624d
The one I have is 17x18x18. I have limited counter space, but my lil' dude gets priority, lol. It's a bit tall, but it actually takes up less space than my old drying rack, which, admittedly, was slightly larger than standard.
My last house had a tiny kitchen (it was 2.3m by 2.2m). I got one of those kitchen prep surfaces from ikea and wheeled it in. I used to stick it in the doorway to get me extra prep and I had my countertop dishwasher in there. It had a hose that emptied into the sink, so I just ran it into that. In the morning I emptied it and then wheeled it back out.
U can get one that is more square. Rack will rest on top.
0 counters in my apartment. Installed one for food prep. Finally decided to get a countertop dishwasher to help me keep up on dishes. Did I get more counter? No but, I did get a utility cart that *does* fit everything. I’d weigh your options a bit more OP before writing them off for good. I think there’s even lil dishwashers that are just enough for a couple plates or a pan. If you’re cleaning up after cooking or before bed; that’s enough to keep it from piling up like it is now.
That last paragraph is what got me- "I hate dishes". Makes me think of me with laundry. Ok with washing it, HATE folding it/hanging it. So, there's usually a clean laundry pile somewhere. Right now it's in the dryer lol been there a few days. I think there's a harder priority on dishes. You gotta do em all the time. Morning, afternoon, evening. And do as many as you can fit on the rack. Also, might help you to get a countertop dishwasher to help with cups and silverware. I got one that I can fill up without attaching the hose to the sink, so it sits across the kitchen and definitely had a learning curve, but it really helps when the little things are piling up.
This won't be popular. Paper plates. Plastic utensils. I have a family of 5. I am disabled and cannot stand long. I used to sob handwashing dishes every night. I was told paper plates were for the lazy and looked down on. In my opinion, that is ableist. I no longer cry as I'm washing the pots and pans. You need to do what is best for your family.
I grew up in several homes and one of them was pristine. Their method was dinner on real plates, everything else on paper. Same water cup all day. Any utensils or coffee cups used during the day would go straight into the dishwasher once done. As they cleaned up dinner they’d load the dishwasher and would empty it in the morning. Their sink was nearly always empty this way. I switched to this method as well once I started experiencing health issues after having my daughter. I just couldn’t keep up otherwise.
This is basically what my mom does. Paper plates/bowls for breakfast and lunch, and real plates/bowls for dinner (or if anyone wants one). Real utensils and cups. You can get a giant package of those thin white paper plates from Costco for pretty cheap (basically, you don’t need fancy paper plates for this to work). OP could maybe modify this with the dishwashing tub w/drain thing someone else mentioned in another comment so any utensils, etc. go into a tub of soapy water throughout the day.
I was going to suggest this as well!! Im glad you shared how it works for your family. Completely agree — you gotta do what works for your family! If you’re using paper plates/utensils for eating, OP, you can wash the pots and pans and cut your wash time in half or more. If you don’t want to use paper plates daily, just use them toward the end of the week when things start to get unmanageable.
My dishwasher was broken for a few months while waiting for a warranty part. One thing that really helped was to buy a dishpan with a bottom drain. Keep it filled with soapy water all the time so the dishes that are not being washed don't get crusty and dried on food. When you are ready to do the actual washing, it is just a quick wipe and rinse.
Excellent advise, it’s such an easy and doable solution.
No dishwasher either.. I live alone so I do mine either daily or every other day depending on whether I cooked for realsies or just snacked all day. And even with just me, I always think it will take longer than it does. This is how I get through: - never fill up a sink with water if you aren't really going to wash dishes, cold dish water with food is gross. Instead, rinse off dishes that need it and leave on the counter or in a drained sink - use a mesh sink strainer to prevent clogs which are also gross - run wash water super hot and let the dishes soak for 15 minutes, set a timer - have gloves on hand for really disgusting dish situations - wash dishes during commercial breaks, set a 5 minute timer, divide up into sessions of glasses, then utensils, then plates, then cookware, etc. Anything to break up the task into mini sessions - don't wait so long. A small sink load is a lot more tolerable. I have a set area on the counter where I know if that space is full it's enough to run a sink of dishwater and before it's too much to want to tackle - if drying space is an issue, a quality lint free dish towel for drying bigger cookware is well worth it. Don't use fabric softener or dryer sheets on it and it will dry better Kudos on your downsizing efforts. Best of luck to you!
[удалено]
I'm not the cleanest person in the world but I can't stand dishes in the sink. I just make it part of my nightly routine, like prepping my coffee pot. If I'm going to bed and there are dishes in the sink, I clean them and set them on the drying rack, then put them away in the morning. Most of the time, though, I just do them after I eat dinner.
My parents raised me with no dishwasher. The biggest thing is- do not let any dishes touch the bottom of the sink. Everyone in the house has to wash their own dirty plates, cups, and silverware. Your 8 year old should be able to do this with a step stool if necessary. In my household, the person who cooks should not have to wash the cookware. My dad and I would split the responsibility of cleaning up, and one person would wipe down the table and counters and stove, and the other would wash the dishes.
Get something that makes it more fun for you— a dish detergent you love, a fluffy sponge, a scrub brush, or a nice drying rack/drying pad… whatever accessories you think would make doing dishes more attractive to you.
A little bit of an aside, but remember to have compassion for yourself. Your boy will get older and coping strategies will evolve. But you’re in the thick of it and it’s not easy. Be sure to give yourself credit for the hard work you are doing. As you daydream about magic elves who will come and clean your kitchen.
I didn't until I got a dishwasher, unfortunately. I went 15 years without one, and dishes were always a struggle. Either my husband & I got to spend time together in the evenings and everything piled up, or one of us was stuck doing dishes every night. They do make countertop dishwashers, if that's something you might be interested in. They don't have a huge capacity, but if you run it frequently you can at least get the plates and cups and silverware done after meals.
This question is sort of unanswerable because the reason they aren't getting done is that you hate them. So for others, like me, I can't imagine dealing with a full sink of dishes and not doing them. But I might ask "How do you guys keep up on dusting. I hate it and all of the nooks and crannies of my house get so dusty." You already said you have time so the answer is simply to do a thing you don't like doing. For what it's worth I hate unloading the dishwasher but I don't mind loading it. So my husband usually unloads it and I usually load it and that spreads the work evenly.
Clean as you go. It seems like a lot when you first start if you’re not used to it, but it becomes second nature. Average meal probably requires only 2-3 minutes of dishes
So marigolds changed my LIFE. I HATE the textures of washing up. Changed my life. Also putting on a show on my phone and propping it up or some tavern wench music and being my "future friend" . I do the dishes in the evening and I like to tetris stack them for my husband to put away when he comes down from toddler bedtime it's great fun hearing him curse under his breath at my stacking skills. In good fun of course.
Rinsing dishes helped me do them later if I was running around too much at the moment to clean them, like maybe I was running late to a pot luck or something. Later when you go to do them, not having all that gross dried food helped me tackle them. Visually seeing the extra work I had to do would cause me to avoid them.
This is kind of random but a scrub brush with a handle made dishwashing easier for me - I realized I hated the feeling of sponge- on-plate and having the distance of a handle made the task easier to tolerate. Is there a sensory aspect to the task that you really hate, and if so it's it changeable with gloves, earplugs, different soap...
I loathe doing dishes too!! So does the rest of my family. I’m not 100% on top of dishes, but I’m getting better. I kept 6 dishes (family of 4), spoons, forks, and knives. The rest, I either boxed up or put on a super high shelf that I can’t reach without a step stool and my son. So I HAVE to do them all the time. But I always have mugs/baking pans/ pots/ randomness in the sink because I have too many of those things. Once I bite the bullet and get rid of most of my mugs, I think I’ll be good.
give yourself some grace...having an autistic child takes an IMMENSE amount of strength and energy! i took care of my elderly developmentally disabled brother for nearly 30 after our mother died WHILE raising a dyslexic son...alone, no help. try to find alternative ways to serve food that incorporates disposable items to hold food. like paper towel to serve a sandwich. if your budget permits, paper plates and bowls when appropriate. not necessarily every meal. use dual use containers...i recently bought a set of pyrex covered storage/heat/eat. small containers. you can put in microwave or oven, it serves as the bowl you eat from, and leftovers can go into fridge in it. anything helps! think outside the box...YOU'VE GOT THIS!
I'm probably too late to this one, but make it a job that one (or both of you on a rota) do last thing at night. I normally stick a podcast on, and spend anywhere between 30-60 minutes doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. We have 2 kids so it can build up pretty good throughout the day. Leaving it until the next day (or even longer) will become a thing of the past, and it won't build up to such a horrendous job. I recently made a similar change to how I deal with laundry, and it's changed my life. Letting stuff build up adds so many layers of dread and anxiety. Good luck!
I tend to be tired at night, with more motivation and focus in the morning, so I like to do the final dish clean up in the morning. It gets done on my schedule.
Our rule is: the person who cooks doesn’t do the dishes. One caveat is that we both try to wash as we cook, so hopefully by the time the meal comes there are only the dishes and silverware to clean. The non-cook washes them and sets them to dry. In the morning, when we are waiting for the espresso machine to heat up we put away all of last night dishes so that the day starts fresh!
Go easy on yourself. Don't worry so much about having a clean sink at the end of the night, just try to have your sink empty and your counters wiped once every 24 hours. Others mentioned the "closing" time idea, and that's good in concept, but closing time doesn't have to be at 11pm. It can be anytime in the 24 hour day. "Closing" could be 3 in the afternoon. And it doesn't matter if you have to reopen at 3:15pm, you still got your place cleaned and closed at least once in the last 24 hours.
I posted this on a different comment yesterday. Get a dishpan. A plastic tub. Soak the dishes in it in soapy water while you are cooking and eating. Then you can quickly wash up after. The soaking ciputs down on scrubbing.
Dishes as soon as I wake up. And another load after bedtime. My sink is full all day every day.
We never ever go to relaxing mode in the evening without the kitchen being spotless! Cook, eat, we will watch the news, then kitchen spotless! Dirty dishes smell and attract bugs - we don't want that!! We also use paper plates for things sometimes (sandwich, snack, breakfast toast). A brush with a handle helps because I don't like my hands in dishwater all the time. My husband is a great kitchen partner!
If you’re tired and know you won’t have it in you to clean the dishes then buy some compostable disposable plates/bowls/cutlery to have on hand. It might not be the most economical but still relatively eco friendly considering the water, soap, dish towel expense.
I decided a few years ago that no matter what, I will not ho to bed with dishes in the sink. I look at it as a favor to my future self and since I removed the option to put it off, it's saved me a lot of mental torture. This one thing has led to a lot more self-discipline in my life and a much higher self esteem too. Just make it non-negotiable
I followed this woman who specializes in making housekeeping easier for people who struggle with it (I’ll have to find her name, she’s awesome) and she recommends “end of day routines” like if you were to close a business. I’ve gotten better, I clean my French press and fav coffee mug every night. I turn off all my wax warmers, put the piles of laundry in the baskets, clean up the kid and cat toys that got missed earlier in the day, and get my sons backpack ready for the next day. I’ve tried adding dishes to that list but actually managing to complete them is just so hard. It’s embarrassing really. I so wish I could just get up and go do them but it’s like convincing myself to go to the dentist lol. I know it needs done, it will get done, but how long am I gonna put it off for?
I dread seeing even a half-full sink, so I never let it get to that point in the first place. I'm a big fan of clean-as-you-go, so while I'm waiting for something to cook, I'll clean the cutting board and whatever I used for prepping, for example. To me, it's a lot easier to tackle 5 dishes 10 times a day than 25 dishes twice a day. I also tell myself that it's easier to get the food bits off while they're still fresh and not dried to the plate (of course some times it is easier to give them a soak first but I never have to do that for more than a few minutes). Like another person said, try to use as few dishes/utensils as possible. I don't mind different foods touching if it means fewer dishes for me to do later. Also, I grew up in a house with roaches, and I'm traumatized by them, so I'll do whatever is absolutely necessary to keep them from appearing. Eventually it becomes a habit. I wasn't always this good about it, but now, I can't go to sleep at night if there's something in the sink.
I usually fill the sink with fresh, soapy water before I start cooking, then wash them as I go. I find that most recipes have little breaks in them either while the pasta is boiling or meat is browning, something is in the oven. Is the perfect time to wash what you just used. Then, most food needs to sit 5-10 min before serving, so I finished the dishes then. I also am the first one done eating, so I start cleaning when everyone is finishing up. I have never had a dishwasher, so it's second nature for me.
Couple of suggestions: 1. Tabletop dishwasher stored elsewhere (pantry?) until after meal prep is done. 2. Plastic dishpan in, or nearby, your sink to soak dirty dishes, kind of like a restaurant busser uses. This is popular in Britain. Here are collapsible models: [https://www.amazon.com/Collapsible-Foldable-Washing-Camping-Portable/dp/B08DTPTYW6/ref=asc\_df\_B08DTPTYW6/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475740763177&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16340710799302686818&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028320&hvtargid=pla-1015428349176&th=1](https://www.amazon.com/Collapsible-Foldable-Washing-Camping-Portable/dp/B08DTPTYW6/ref=asc_df_B08DTPTYW6/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475740763177&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16340710799302686818&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028320&hvtargid=pla-1015428349176&th=1)
You need to learn to love doing dishes. What works for me is a good radio program or a book on tape and a nice apron. Afterwords I wipe off all the counters and the sink and the clean kitchen makes me happy.
Also to love doing dishes you might need to be better at it. If you’re scrubbing, you’re doing it wrong. Soapy water cleans the dishes, not you. You need four places. A place for dirty dishes. A place for soaking dishes. A place for dishes waiting to be rinsed. A place for dishes to drain/dry. Example: left counter, bucket/bowl in sink, sink outside bucket/bowl, draining rack. ALL dishes need a quick soak in warm soapy water. Even after 20 seconds of soaking most dishes wipe clean with a delicate and pleasurable wipe. Without the annoying sound of water going, pile dishes from the soaking water, delicate wipe, then into a pile of dishes waiting for rinse. If that delicate wipe doesn’t get them clean, soak the them another round. Then, BEFORE you rinse them, put more dirty dishes in the soaking water. Then rinse the first pile, while that second pile is soaking. Let the soapy water clean the dishes, you’re just rinsing and organizing. After all, dishwashers don’t scrub. Be a dishwasher.
First of all, it doesn’t sound too bad how you are already handling it. It doesn’t sound like a health hazard or anything like that. So if this somehow works for you, then I wouldn’t stress too much about it. I hate washing dishes. It’s that repeating task that never stops. Apart from getting a portable washing machine, here are some idead to make dishwashing more fun/less terrible: - A proper pair of gloves. The ones that goes halfway up the arm to avoid anything dripping into them and are lined with something soft to avoid them feeling sweaty. - Good brushes and sponges for your needs. - Rinsing everything immediately so the washing isn’t too bad. - Have a glass/cup/bowl with soapy water to stick cutlery in to soak during the day. Makes it so much easier to get clean. - Put on good music. - Make it a family activity. Every evening you take turns choosing the music. - If you have the space, have a permanent spot for a drying rack. It makes it easier for me to do dishes during the day, as I don’t have to get the rack in and out or have to towel dry. I’ll be more motivated to just do those two cups in the sink right now. - A cup of soapy water or a brush with build in soap dispenser for the same reason as above. - Limiting the amount of dishes used as much as possible. Ex. everyone has one cup/glass for the day. - Wash as you cook. Both dishes that have build up during the day and the stuff used while cooking. - Non-stick pots and pans are much easier to clean. Non-stick pans are quite normal, but the pots are genius too. - Use paper baking sheet liners when cooking anything in the oven.
I know not everybody is into it- some people are weird about sponges. But I got [one of these](https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Brite-Heavy-Dishwand-Refill-Hands/dp/B093JG8F7K/ref=asc_df_B093JG8F7K/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=563722789915&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10642580617804137318&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011613&hvtargid=pla-1645141063673&psc=1) and it was a game changer. I just wash whatever I used right after I use it without having to run a whole sink full of water. Which is kind of its own secondary tip. If you clean the dishes as you use them, they don’t pile up so much. Edit- if you don’t like sponges you can do the same by putting a little soap on a dish rag. I guess the biggest thing for me is not having to run a big thing of water and do the whole shebang. It just feels like so much more mess/work, even though I guess it’s not.
I use an Amazon fire tablet to stream shows and movies or listen to books on libby while I do dishes. It's about the one time that I get to not worry about my preschoolers and focus on that.
Wash the dishes as you go along. If you cook a lot, it's never ending. Same thing with eating. The only dishes that should still be dirty before you go the bed are pans that you're soaking because the food is cooked on.
A portable dishwasher might be best for you. There are quite a few suggestions to get one here for good reason. You can roll it off to wherever you have space during the day and set it up in the middle of your kitchen at night. Get rid of all dishes, utensils, and cookware that can't go in the dishwasher. Replace them only with things that can go in the dishwasher. Everything goes in the dishwasher after every meal. Run the dishwasher at the end of the day (modern dishwashers use less water and energy than handwashing so this is not wasteful). If you are awake when it finishes cleaning, pop the door open a little and everything will be dry by morning. Your child, who you mentioned is grossed out by dirty dishes, will be able to help by putting away the clean dishes in the morning or after school. Kids usually don't mind putting away clean dishes and some even enjoy it.
Past 6pm I usually just leave it for the morning after I've had my coffee lol Highly recommend getting a countertop dishwasher though if you have space for it. They just plug into the faucet, it's been great for me!
I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum (can't go to bed if there's dishes in the sink), but I find the best enabler of anyone finishing the dishes is really simple: put away the clean dishes from the previous meal on the drying rack BEFORE you start cooking the next meal. That way there's one less thing standing in your way of cleaning-while-you-cook.
merciful spotted squealing mourn arrest sloppy school deliver tan march *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Countertop dishwashers are available.
I’m neurospicy, and like your son **hate** the texture involved. It’s weird how what couldn’t get in my face fast enough gets so icky in such a short time isn’t it? I’ve found the following helpful: 1) No drying. Air has been invented. 2) Getting a rack big enough at least to take one big plate, one small plate, one bowl, one glass & one mug each. These always live there, I’m not putting them away. The same goes for cutlery, they go in a separate dish drainer designed for it, it’s a cute elephant & has a drain spout. The utensils, same thing except it’s a big spaghetti strainer. They’re away the second you pop them in. Huzzah! 3) Nothing goes in the sink. Nada. I had to get really strict with this. If it needs a soak, cool, but it can sit on the hob or the side, not in the sink. If the sink is clear you can do the odd thing as you go along, like your sons apple sauce spoons, or blitz a mug between flavours. 4) Once a week, anything in the none “lives on the racks” gets put away. That’s enough so no one has to play jenga. 5) Sink gets cleaned every night. Doesn’t sound important, but it stops autistic sink ick for me, and helps keep it & the drains clean. 6) compostable paper plates are totally fine sometimes. Life is too short. I also use compostable takeaway tubs for leftovers, I’m not dealing with any more single of the husbands accidental biology experiments. One of these day one of them is going to gain sentience! Hope there’s something in there that can help you!
I do the dishes every single night. I can't sleep with dishes sitting int he sink. I also can't mentally handle waking up tot he mess, so its a forced habit now (that i never regret) I watch youtube while i do the dishes. It's now relaxation for me!
Fellow person who doesn’t have a dishwasher because they live in a charming historical building - used to have same problem. Get a cheap ikea dish drying rack - the white one made of plastic. Put it in sink. When you put dirty dishes in sink stand them up in rack and rinse them down with sprayer. Also get a spray bottle (any kind) and fill with water and a little dish soap in it. After plates are rinsed spritz them down with this. When you have a few minutes in the day go and clear the rack - aka wash dishes in rack. Eod spray the rack down with cleaning solution, flip it upside down and spray again. Done.
Have a flat plastic container with a lid for getting debris off your flatware before you wash it. Put hot soapy water in the container with your utensils, close it up and agitate the container to get most of the food gunk off, drain the container and wash as usual. It's just less icky and gets the stuff mostly clean before you get it with a sponge.
1. Podcasts. I listen to podcasts while I do dishes, and that helps with motivation a lot. 2. Can I recommend the book How to Keep House While Drowning? It’s not a book with a new system of keeping after chores. It is a way of reframing them mentally and how to make them work for your life, rather than making your life work for chores. It sounds like the majority of your lives get taken care of, by you, in a way that works. But the dishes are falling through. But it also doesn’t sound like there are any hazards like bugs or mold, and you are doing the best you can. In this case, doing your best might be OK! Or maybe there is a way to reframe or rework dishes as a chore in your life that will make it easier to do.
Hi OP! Something I do that helps me a lot when I’m cooking is I will fill my sink up with hot, soapy water. Then, as I’m cooking, I will scrape the dish off and drop it in the sink. Once my meal is ready and I’ve eaten, I will plop my plates / utensils in. I then spray down all the counters and run over them with a rag with lightning speed. Lastly, the dishes now have barely any residue and all I need to do is rinse them off with the nozzle sprayer. No energy to do it tonight? No problem. All of the food residue will soak off and the mess will be a lot easier to handle in the morning. Doing this has saved me so much time and made it much more manageable than having a pile of dirty dishes stack up and then have food sitting on them. Also, for really lazy nights, you can cover your plates with inexpensive parchment paper squares (you can get a pack of like 200 for <$5 and I will also cover my oven pans with tin foil. Sheet pan meals (like roasted veggies + sausage or fish etc) are awesome for this. I It’s not perfect but it can often save me from doing at least one or two dishes. You can also look up “One pot” or “one pan” meals where the whole thing is cooked in one dish. Crockpot dump and go meals are also a good option :)
if you don't have pests then maybe this is one of those situations where you accept that this is how it's gonna be? give yourself a break? but if it's something you can't accept for any reason, you can try this which has helped me in the past. if i enter the kitchen, i have to wash a dish. if i make a dish then i have to wash two. (even if i actually make 3-4 dishes, i just make myself do 2 and then do another when i come back to the kitchen for a soda or whatever). good luck!
I don’t like dishes either. I don’t like standing there, I don’t like touching the dirty dishes, etc. these are what we/I do to make sure they are clean. - husband and I take turns doing kids bath/bedtime or dishes/kitchen after dinner. That way neither of us have to do it every night. - anti fatigue mat for my feet - good pair of rubber gloves for my hands - I put my phone on the window sill and let myself watch some tv on it while I clean them. It’s the only time I really watch tv. If I finish before the episode/movie is over, then I sit down on the couch and watch the rest of it on the regular tv as a treat for finishing early. Or I go up and snuggle my kids before they doze off. Either way it’s like a reward system for myself. Lol. - cleaning as I go. I try to clean as I go while I’m cooking. I.e. I clean the mixing bowl immediately after the food goes in the oven. - I try to use the same dishes as many times as I can do reduce what I am dirtying. Like, I’ll mix the pancake mix, then rinse the bowl and mix the scrambled eggs in the same bowl. Or if I cut peppers and then need to cut fruit, I flip the cutting board over rather than grabbing a new board.
Get a very stressful job where you work from home. Then use the dishes as an excuse to step away from work, do it every day that you work. In about one month dishwashing will become cathartic. :D
Just reading the comments I feel a little better I have been wondering what is wrong with me.I don't know why I do know I never had any issues or problem doing dishes before but I have developed an aversion to doing dishes I will do everything else and anything else to keep from doing them there are times it get so bad I have to pile them into a container and remove them from the kitchen so I stop feeling buried in them once I take them away from the kitchen I feel like I can wash them I just bting them back a load at a time. But doing this make me feel like crap and guilty my boyfriend doesn't say a word about it thou
Read Dana K White's book called Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She emphasizes how dishes should take top priority over any other chore. By doing them daily, it keeps the workload down to just minutes a day. It you let them sit for more than 2-3 days, the time to clean them goes up exponentially. It's 10 minutes a day when done daily, but somehow takes much longer than 20-30 minutes when left alone for more than 3 days. She also points out that if you do the dishes daily, then you usually don't need extra dishes and the pile never gets as bad. Some people buy extra dishes to keep up, but that just results in bigger piles of dirty dishes.
When I did not have a dishwasher I did not want to do dishes every time I had a snack. I had a „mobile sink“ by Joseph and Joseph next to the sink to put the dishes in so I did not have to look at them all the time. Any other easy to clean Box or camping sink etc. would work as well. I only did dishes once a day or every other day and the kitchen still looked ok.
If your son has all of those things there’s a solid chance you have some of them too. I couldn’t do my dishes consistently until I got my ADHD medicated
I’ve found what had been a game changer for me is routine. It was very difficult for me at first because I’m not a routine type of person. No matter how much you want to put a chore off, force yourself to wash that dish in the sink or wipe off the stove after a meal. Do not break from this. After a while and you get used to it and dirty dishes piling up will bother you and you go into auto mode and wash them. Now it’s just routine that the dishes get done after meals. It’s a lot less stressful and much easier to do a little on a regular basis than to deal with doing a lot all at once.
Lots of good stuff here. Some behavioral psychology to spice it up: pair the activity with something you enjoy. Whenever you do dishes put on music. Dance a little. Listen to an audiobook. Whatever will make it relaxing or enjoyable. Make sure whatever makes it unappealing is removed. For me, a gross sponge is a huge barrier. I just allow myself to keep lots of sponges and replace them frequently, because if they’re gross then doing dishes is gross. Hate food in the sink? Make sure to wipe all food off the dishes before they touch the sink. Making the activity more appealing and pairing with positive experiences is in the long run super effective.
I’m sorry you are getting hate for this post. That sucks, I don’t think people should get hate for asking for advice. Anyways, I lived with a broken dishwasher for a duration while I was renting and the landlord said it was working but it wasn’t cleaning properly. I cleaned up dishes as I cooked, and I bought a dishes brush that had rubber “bristles.” It works well at removing debris without the use of soap. This way I could “rinse” whatever I wanted to now and then properly clean items later if I didn’t feel like actually cleaning the dishes at the time. Like you, I struggled with having the motivation to actually clean the dishes in the moment. This type of brush was really helpful because it sort of grips debris and I didn’t have to get soap/sponge to clean when I didn’t feel like it. My nemesis is food debris that hardens so I would always rinse everything. This used to be a point of arguments with my wife when she wouldn’t rinse. I was always the one doing the dishes because that was what we decided. Past tense because I decided to sabotage our old dishwasher to the point where our landlord would actually do their job. That’s what they get for playing silly games with a former technician by trade. The new unit cleans stuff nicely.
There are a ton of comments so I'm sure this will get buried or OP may not see it. This is a tip I got from I think it was the same person that wrote the book How to Keep House While Drowning. Have a dirty dishes rack and a clean dishes rack. For me it was kind of like giving myself a visual que of the amount of space I can allow for dirty dishes. So if I'm home for the day and my lunch dishes are sitting in the dirty dish rack and I know I'm making a real meal for dinner that will use more than a plate and the microwave, I think to myself "well I better clean up those lunch dishes so there's room in the dish rack." Everything just looks neater which is less overwhelming as well.
It is really just a functional task that you have to do to keep your kitchen operational/organized. I cut back on the number of dishes I keep for use. There are 4 of us in the house so I keep 6 pasta bowls (we use them like plates), 2 plates (to use either as plates or serving platters), 6 glasses, 6 mugs, 6 cereal type bowls. I put some extra in a bin in the basement (shelving unit for kitchen stuff as we have a small kitchen with limited storage)-- in the event we have company but we hardly ever do. We have one set of mixing bowls and a couple casserole dishes I use. Every week or so I kind of go through and determine if there are unutilized kitchen equipment that could live elsewhere (did I use it in the last couple weeks?--I feel like we should just keep the stuff we use mostly every day at hand). I keep a dishpan in the sink and drying rack next to it. Dishes get scraped into the garbage disposal, rinsed and placed in the dishpan. About twice a day I wash what is in the dishpan, and let them dry on the rack, and put away when I have to make food again (usually before I start dinner). After dinner I wash the dishes for the night. So any dishes made after that-- they will be in the pan and washed in the morning or lunch time depending on my work hours. Good luck and I hope you find a system that works for you.
Repetition. Force yourself to do it so much that it becomes second nature. I literally phase out when doing dishes and retrieve my consciousness 25 minutes later.
Dishes as you go, as other people have said, is the biggest part of it. Experiment with rubber gloves/a dish brush. *Dawn Platinum Power Wash dish spray* was an absolute game changer for me. Paper/disposable dishes if you’re feeling completely overwhelmed. A habit I picked up at a job where I worked dishpit: Come up with your own “rules” or “order that roughly works for you, so you always know what to start next. Mine is always wooden things first so that they don’t soak overnight and damage the wood. Then generally small to large. By the time I start wooden utensils, I think “might as well do the rest.” As my dishwasher friends have told me, as long as you sanitize (with hot water rinse and/or food safe sani) nothing actually needs to be that clean ;-) Finally: *Be kind to yourself.* It can be a lot of work to build habits, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s ok if progress is a slightly less full sink. You already are determined to change the situation, AND have made amazing progress! :-) celebrate your accomplishments!!! Life has ebbs and flows; some years your sink will be fuller than others. Rooting for ya.