Ways We Save Money: Washing the Dishes

Originally Posted on April 24, 2018 in Free, Fun, Family

Everyone hates washing dishes.  Especially other people’s dishes.  Marriages end over dirty dishes.  However, a sink full of dirty dishes can really torpedo your efforts to save money.  How?

It’s no secret that cooking at home saves money.  I enjoy cooking, and both Min and I have improved as cooks over the years.  However, coming home after a difficult day to a sink of dishes that need to be washed before dinner can be started was killing my meal planning efforts.  Part of it was my failure to eat an afternoon snack, leaving me ravenous at 4:30 p.m. when I got home.  But even when I solved that problem, doing dishes and then cooking when my children are starved for Mommy time after I’ve been away from them all day was killing my best laid plans.  I’d let all the wonderful vegetables I’d bought to make chili or soup rot in the fridge and heat up another frozen pizza instead.  There was a period we were so stressed about dirty dishes that I would just pick up fast food on the way home.

Keeping the sink relatively free of dirty dishes and the dishwasher cleared of already clean dishes makes cooking and meal planning easier and more fun.  I make more healthy food, use up more of the food I buy, and is more sanitary and environmentally friendly.  However, this was not an easy routine to master.

Failed “Solutions”

• Ignoring the problem. Obviously this is less a strategy than a desperate method of coping by me that sometimes resulted in purchasing more utensils or cookware… Stupid!
• Disposable products. Paper plates, plastic utensils, aluminum lining for baking trays, and water bottles bought in bulk did help prevent dining out and fast food runs when we were really awful.  However, cookware was still dirty and buried under a mound of things that needed to be rinsed (scraped because they’d been left to sit) and put in the dishwasher.  Which meant we “cooked” more convenience foods.
• Blaming the other person. You have all this time being home all day.  Just do it before you leave for work in the morning.  Wash any dishes you use right after you use them and load them in the washer.  Except don’t load them in the washer like that.  I thought you already ran the washer.  I couldn’t load the dishes because you never unloaded the washer.  And on and on…  We aren’t proud of this.

What did work?

I changed my attitude.

I have learned that the only person’s behavior you can really change is your own (though certainly you can influence the behavior of others, you cannot change them).  I changed my approach to dishes.   I decided to just step up and take responsibility for the dishes in the sink.  And running the dishwasher.  And putting the dishes away.  Whenever I had time.  No matter who created the mess.  Because this was my family and the dishes were my responsibility, even if that responsibility was shared.

People say marriage is 50-50.  That’s an error.  Successful marriage is 100-100, each person all-in, giving everything they have.

This mental adjustment began when H was six months old and Min broke his leg.  It shook me out of the petty you-did-this, I-did-that score keeping of housework.  It took a few weeks for the dish-washing habit to become routine and I’m not as vigilant as my mother who won’t go to bed with a dirty dish in the sink, but in the end, it took less time to clean even a full sink of dishes than I thought it did.  I even timed myself a few times to ensure myself it only takes a few minutes to clean up.

I’m not the only one in the house that does dishes (Min does more of the cooking during the day, so he does most of the cleaning then, too), but I still take the responsibility in my head seriously.  Letting go of my entitled attitude has changed how I view this chore and has made it possible for success with planning and cooking meals.  Which saves a lot of money!