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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning.
This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to establish a household rule that nothing stays in the sink.
People spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and keeping the kitchen from descending into chaos can go a long way toward making the house as a whole feel more orderly.
So if your household is like mine, you have probably noticed something.
Clutter attracts clutter.
If one piece of mail is left on the counter, it becomes a magnet for others.
People just drop the junk mail there without throwing it out.
Whereas if the counter is clear most of the time, people won't be the first one to leave something there.
Same with communal spaces such as a hallway.
A few years ago we had boxes from moving in the hallway upstairs and these boxes attracted all sorts of random objects getting piled on top of them.
I got rid of the boxes, and now the hallway has stayed clear for years.
I didn't get different family members.
It's just that now a single item left in the hallway will attract attention.
What is that doing here?
There is accountability for it.
So in general, people don't do it.
This definitely applies to the sink.
In my house, dishes get dirty at three different meals during the day to say nothing of snacks.
But as much as possible, we try to establish a routine that nothing stays in the sink.
If anyone leaves a dirty dish in the sink, it becomes a free-for-all.
Soon, the dishes are stacked up and no one feels accountable for any of it.
Better to keep the sink clear and not have the pileup happen.
This is accomplished by a few things.
First, the dishwasher runs late at night, after people are most likely done with creating dirty dishes.
The dishwasher is then emptied first thing in the morning.
That means that when people are creating dirty dishes, there is space in the dishwasher for them to go.
Next, anyone leaving dishes in the sink is called out on it.
A child who leaves a dish in the sink is called back to put it where it is supposed to go, namely in the dishwasher.
If the child has left the house, I tend to just do it.
Because even one dish left in the sink tends to introduce a permission structure where people think oh, the dishwasher must be clean or that no one will notice.
So better to get the one dish put away, rather than wait for that person to come back.
The guilty party can be reminded at another point and chastised then.
Likewise, pots and pans need to be cleaned immediately after use.
A scrub brush and dishwashing soap that can be sprayed onto pots and pans means it is possible to do a small number of items or even just one at a time if there is only one dirty dish.
No need to fill the sink with water and make suds, a practice that would seem to make it more efficient to allow the dishes to build up.
Now, I understand the concept of letting something soak, but this can be done while other dishes are being done.
So if you have four pans to scrub, put the one that needs to soak in the sink first with some dish soap and then wash the others.
By the time you finish the others, the grime will have partly dislodged on the first pan, and then it can be dealt with.
Leaving it to soak for hours means more dishes will get left in the sink.
And then we are back to chaos.
By having systems in place, it turns out that there is no benefit to batching the dishes, and so they don't build up.
This means any time doing the dishes only has to take a minute or so.
The sink stays clear.
The kitchen stays under control.
In any case, if you haven't set a family policy that nothing stays in the sink, you might consider it.
A giant pile of dirty dishes makes a kitchen feel out of control.
An empty sink makes it look reasonably clean.
It is not that hard to keep the sink clean.
As long as the dishwasher is run and emptied on the right schedule, then it is no harder to put a fork in the dishwasher than to place it in the sink.
But one makes the kitchen feel a lot cleaner than the other.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening.
And here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam.com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeart Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Media, please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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