dishpan hands
i wash dishes by hand in the sink with running water. do not lecture me on the abuse of our aquatic resources. i do not like dishwashers and i think i'd rather use paper plates for all eternity before washing dishes in a sinkful of soapy water. (eeew!)
washing dishes is a ritual, but not one i always enjoy. if cam will do the dishes, great. i'm always pleased when this happens in a TIMELY fashion. (don't even get me started on past mold issues.) and even though it makes me feel a tiny bit guilty, i'm always secretly pleased when my mom steps in and does the dishes for us while we're at work. i feel like if i cook, i shouldn't have to do the dishes, but cam never feels any urgency about the process. sometimes i do dishes while i'm cooking just so that there are less of them afterwards. it's kind of a pain to be putting on and taking off the rubber gloves and positioning and repositioning the dishtowel just so on the counter in front of the sink so i don't get soaked, but it's preferable to walking into the kitchen at 5:50 the next morning and being confronted by the pile of greasy pans from hell.
because we handwash all dishes and other related kitchen stuff, we have a fancypants dishrack out on the counter. for most of my life i've had a two-bowl sink and one of those bowls was always filled with a dishrack, leaving me with a ridiculously small area for dishwashing. when we were planning our current kitchen, i was adamant about having a single bowl. this (i think) is the one we got and i love it. i can wash all sorts of things in it, including paul. anyway, i know that dishracks on counters is a huge kitchen decorating faux pas, but i think our snooty one is kind of nice-looking. on saturday (or was it sunday?) i cleaned it with barkeepers friend and stainless steel cleaner and i thought it looked actually kind of elegant. only when empty, of course. there is nothing elegant about take 'n' toss straw cups or cheap frying pans. i thought about using the dishwasher to hold dishes while they dry, but i'd have to leave the door open and that would block the path to the fridge. poor planning, that. (but don't blame me -- that's the existing hookup. our renovation was pretty much cosmetic.)
i think if we ever get dishdrawers, i'll make an effort to use them and to rid myself of my dislike of dishwashers. we never used ours growing up -- whenever we tried, the kitchen would flood. my aunt explained that because we never used it, the seals dried out and cracked, so that's why it never worked right. back then i thought she was crazy -- how can something left alone break? -- but it makes sense to me now. whether or not she was right, i don't know, but it makes sense. it's kind of like windshield wipers, right? when you don't use them all summer they get kind of brittle. cam and i have had dishwashers in apartments and i've used them, but we always used them after we already washed the dishes. the dishwasher was purely for sanitizing, which i don't really consider necessary.
i can't believe i'm writing a treatise on dishwashing. i better shut up now.