Last week, when I posted about our goals to get our house clean and clutter free, I didn't go into much detail about which areas of our house needed work, except my closet bedroom (which I spent about 15 hours working on this weekend, and once I'm done organizing my shoes, I'll show you pics!).
That's because basically all areas need improvement.
But one of my big pet peeves is the kitchen sink being full of dishes. Of course, I contribute to the issue, but still. I've yet to get the whole "whoever cooks, doesn't have to do the dishes" rule to work. My husband claims I use too many dishes while cooking, and after slaving over a hot stove, I just want to eat, and not worry about the clean up right away. So this leads to a frequent pile of dishes left in the sink, because our dishwasher sucks and is basically useless.
So we've come up with a solution that's been working well for a couple of months, to at least keep our dishes we eat with clean and not piled up in the sink.
On the bottom shelf of our dish cupboard, we only have two dinner plates, two smaller plates, a couple bowls, two forks, two knifes, and two spoons.
That's because basically all areas need improvement.
But one of my big pet peeves is the kitchen sink being full of dishes. Of course, I contribute to the issue, but still. I've yet to get the whole "whoever cooks, doesn't have to do the dishes" rule to work. My husband claims I use too many dishes while cooking, and after slaving over a hot stove, I just want to eat, and not worry about the clean up right away. So this leads to a frequent pile of dishes left in the sink, because our dishwasher sucks and is basically useless.
So we've come up with a solution that's been working well for a couple of months, to at least keep our dishes we eat with clean and not piled up in the sink.
On the bottom shelf of our dish cupboard, we only have two dinner plates, two smaller plates, a couple bowls, two forks, two knifes, and two spoons.
The rest of our dishes are kept on higher shelves, and we're not allowed to use them. Actually, we should really just get rid of most of what is on the top and middle shelves, since they're mostly our old dishes. We haven't unpacked all of our new dishes from their shipping boxes, specifically so they won't get involved in the pile-up, or get broken. Why get them out until we need them?
(Ruh-roh! I just noticed in this picture that one of our good small plates is now on the middle shelf, guess we can't use that one now too!)This is actually working pretty nicely, because as soon as we're done eating, we just quickly rinse the dishes we used, and put them back. They don't get piled up in the sink, because we only have the one set to eat off of!
Now, I know what you're thinking, why not just have a normal shelf full of dishes, and still immediately wash what was used? Yeah, I know, you would think that would be easy, but trust me, it doesn't work. Our deeply ingrained laziness gets a hold of us just once, and we seemingly instantly have a full sink again. Like I said in the post title: baby steps!
So now we only have the dishes used to cook with to worry about piling up. I haven't got a good solution for that one yet though....I'm still not a fan of delaying eating a hot meal just to wash everything (although if it's something I'm sticking in the oven for a while, I just wash while the dish is cooking). And once I'm all stuffed full of dinner, and in the middle of watching a TV show, the last thing I want to do is get up and scrub pots and pans.
Got any suggestions? I guess we could just include a few minutes of washing dishes in our "being good people" 15 minutes a day of cleaning. But that could still mean several days of pile up, since we've only committed to doing the 15 minutes of non-stop cleaning 3x a week....
Now, I know what you're thinking, why not just have a normal shelf full of dishes, and still immediately wash what was used? Yeah, I know, you would think that would be easy, but trust me, it doesn't work. Our deeply ingrained laziness gets a hold of us just once, and we seemingly instantly have a full sink again. Like I said in the post title: baby steps!
So now we only have the dishes used to cook with to worry about piling up. I haven't got a good solution for that one yet though....I'm still not a fan of delaying eating a hot meal just to wash everything (although if it's something I'm sticking in the oven for a while, I just wash while the dish is cooking). And once I'm all stuffed full of dinner, and in the middle of watching a TV show, the last thing I want to do is get up and scrub pots and pans.
Got any suggestions? I guess we could just include a few minutes of washing dishes in our "being good people" 15 minutes a day of cleaning. But that could still mean several days of pile up, since we've only committed to doing the 15 minutes of non-stop cleaning 3x a week....
