Crate and Barrel Marin bowls // OurPlace stackable glasses // Sezane striped top // andddd I would not recommend this gold flatware because the gold is wearing off
Sick of Piling Up Dishes? Try this!
Is there anyone who LOVES doing dishes?
If you don’t, you are going to LOVE this trick.
This may be the most random blog post I’ve written in a long time, and honestly, I have been holding out on you. I should have posted this back in 2020 when everyone seemed to be suffocating under piles of dirty dishes due to all the increased cooking and eating at home during the pandemic. But alas, I did not. And I’m just getting around to sharing this with you. (Forgive me!)
Honestly though, half of you might actually think I’m nuts, so perhaps this won’t be so life-changing for you after all. I promise though–if you will do anything to avoid dishes–THIS WORKS!
I will also admit, we ended up inventing this trick by accident. I can’t take THAT much credit for it.
You see, the dishes we use for ALL THE THINGS are these super versatile bowl plates from Crate & Barrel.
We use them every day, multiple times a day, as plates and also as bowls (for salads, pasta, stews, but they aren’t deep enough for soup IMO, but that’s neither here nor there.) The thing is, we only happen to have two of them. And we love them so much that we ended up always just hand washing them and putting them back away as soon as we were done using them, so we could use them again!
Then, I realized–as everyone else was complaining in March of 2020 about the never-ending pile of dishes in the sink–HEY–we don’t think it’s so bad!? We don’t have that many dishes!? Hm…
Another side bar thing you may not know about me: I HATE the dishwasher. I really hate it. I hate that I have to clean everything before I put dishes in it. (Our dishwasher sucks). And I HATE unloading it. (So much so that Neal does it 98% of the time). Therefore, I will do anything to avoid dishes piling up in the dishwasher, and that also includes hand washing everything right after I use it, so I don’t have to unload it later.
These two things together collided into a lightbulb moment that spurred an intentional habit:
Wash your dish after you use it, and put it away, and you will have no dishes.
If you really want to do a little social experiment: assign each member of the family a set. One plate, one bowl, one set of utensils, one glass, etc and see how it goes. (This is my plan for when we have older kids, because you better believe the whole “put my dish in the sink for someone else to clean” thing will not be happening. It never flew under my mom’s watch and it’s not gunna fly with me.)
Anyway. It works. Seriously. Takes two seconds! We don’t do this one HUNDRED percent of the time with every dish, but we do most of the time. It cuts down on our dishes significantly. We can easily get away with running the dishwasher once a week–if that.
What do you think?
