If you are fortunate enough to own a dishwasher — and I suspect the proportion of you for which this is true is somewhat greater than it would have been maybe 20 years ago — then you have probably encountered The Great Dishwasher Paradox, which is that you've bought an appliance designed to save you time, effort and getting gross old food gunk all over your hands, but where somehow you can't quite bring yourself to do the simple task of loading and unloading it.
Loading and unloading the dishwasher becomes a mission of Sisyphean proportions, far worse than you ever felt about Doing The Washing Up, and so inevitably it happens: a dishwasher full of clean stuff sits around for about a week, while a veritable mountain of dirty plates, cutlery, cups, pots and other kitchen miscellanea builds up atop it, gradually reaching a point where it starts blocking access to other kitchen appliances such as, in our kitchen, the microwave.
Last time my wife took a trip away with some of her friends and family without me, I conquered the dishwasher. I wasn't deliberately trying to conquer the dishwasher, but I did. As soon as my wife returned, it all went to shit again, and I've been trying to recapture that conquest ever since. And I think I've nailed it.
The secret, dear reader, is to ensure that at no point does the dishwasher ever become so full of plates, cutlery, pots and other kitchen miscellanea that it becomes an undesirable amount of effort to unload it. What this means in practice is that you put a few things in the dishwasher immediately when they're dirty and, at an arbitrarily chosen checkpoint for yourself — just before going to bed is a good one — you put the dishwasher on, regardless of whether or not it's full.
Then, the next day when you open it up, there's not very much stuff to put away at all, so it takes less than five minutes to sort it all out, and then you can just put dirty stuff straight into the dishwasher the moment you're done with it. This all but eliminates the Filth Mountain problem, ensures you always have Clean Stuff ready to go, and once you get yourself into this cycle and stick to it, everything suddenly becomes a lot more manageable.
There are risks. The moment you cook something elaborate that involves lots of pots, pans and utensils, you run the risk of crossing that invisible threshold where emptying the dishwasher becomes A Pain. One can prepare for this eventuality by ensuring the dishwasher is completely empty before such a cooking adventure takes place. Then, even the most elaborate dinner service will probably not fill the dishwasher to bursting point, and you should be able to maintain the rhythm of this process.
One might say it is wasteful to run the dishwasher when it's not full. And perhaps it is. But then I think about the number of times we've crammed the dishwasher to breaking point because we'd allowed Filth Mountain to accumulate once again, and how the stuff inside then didn't come out clean, so we had to either run it again or wash stuff by hand, and it doesn't feel like that much of a problem.
Besides, I think we can probably agree that there are much more wasteful things going on in the world today than running a not-full dishwasher each day.
So there you have it. How to win at the dishwasher. I'm disappointed in myself that it's taken 44 years on this Earth to nail this, but at least it's done now. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a dishwasher to load.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
