Of course, I have to tell my story so you can see the full value of my discovery right?
To begin with; when I was growing up, we did not have a dishwasher. All the kids in my family took turns washing the dishes as soon as the youngest was old enough to participate. The dishes would pile up all day and then some time after dinner, one unfortunate soul would stand for at least an hour, elbow deep in scalding pungent water until our hands were numb. We scrubbed at every dish with a rag until the dried-on-mess-from-a-family-of-seven would submit. My mom made every meal, snack and dessert from scratch, by the way.
I remember the powerful odor of the dishsoap and how it gave me a rash and made me itch while the hot water stung my skin. I gritted my teeth, my clothes becoming soaked with every dish that plunged into the water.
My parents had no idea that anyone could be allergic to dishsoap, or that any cries of despair could be anything but laziness. (Just to clarify, my parents were both caring and loving.) My point is, this was not a good first impression to washing dishes (or housekeeping for that matter) and I grew to dread the activity altogether. I'm sure many people can relate to my story.
When I left home, at least there were fewer dishes to wash, but then there were roomates and I am not going to go into detail what kind of problems ensued. Then I was married and there was usually a dishwasher I learned to use, but the struggle continued because it took so long to fill the dishwasher and it didn't do so well getting crusty bits off. So, I would scrape and rinse all the dishes so the dishwasher could get them "clean". The problem is that rinsing and scraping isn't far off of washing by hand and I would frequently fall behind. The dirty dishes would pile up as I avoided the misery that was-washing dishes.
I felt stressed and bogged down by the never-ending chore that no one wanted to help me with. For a short time I sold kitchen tools and soon came to understand what every man who values tools knows, using the right tool for the job gets it done faster and with less effort so you have energy and patience to get more done. I learned how to work smarter to get good healthy food on the table. With this new understanding I thought, surely this applies to cleaning as well, and I went on to find cleaning tools that made my housework easier. This took several years and I tried to utilize the dishwasher, but I kept falling into the same avoidance issues and still felt unhappy and stressed all the time about it.
I looked for better dish washing tools, but I didn't really know what to look for, so much trial and error followed.
One day I was watching an episode of I Love Lucy which included a scene where Lucy was washing dishes. The process was a little different and intrigued me since, I had been applying the wisdom of older generations in my cleaning routine with great success. Lucy plucked a dish from a sink full of steaming water wet a miniature mop, scrub a block of soap with it, scrub the dish with the mop, rinse the dish and put it in the drainer. A light went on in my brain. I remembered a girl I worked with at Dairy Queen who was an amazing dishwasher. I asked her what her secret was and I watched her, but as far as I could tell at the time, she didn't do anything so differently than I did! It was frustrating. What I didn't realize was, she soaked the dirty dishes in scalding water first and didn't scrub the dishes under the water as I did.
I could see the dish mop Lucy used gave her 360 mobility instead or the brushes I was used to, which only give about 90 degrees mobility. I decided to look for a dishmop. I also decided to try using a bar of soap after reading an article about how women used to use a bar of soap to wash everything back in the day, before all the household cleaners were invented! At first I used an unscented Dr. Bronner's Bar and it worked! I started to notice a bit of a film on my dishes and as I researched soap making I realized that the Dr. Bronner's bar I was using was made for skin and had a moisturing amount of oil in it that was coating my dishes. Just at that time, I discovered through MightyNest, a solid dishsoap block and I immediately ordered the unscented block. I have been using it for 3.5 years now and never plan on going back to liquid. I do keep a bottle of unscented liquid dishsoap for the sole purpose of cleaning my blender (it has a heated self-cleaning function.)
Not long after finding my dishsoap bar, I found my dish mop! At first I was considering the kind of mop used to paint barbecue sauce on ribs as you grill. It had a cotton head and looked much like what Lucy used in the show. However, I didn't feel good about it, so I prayed for guidance to find the dish mop I needed. Soon I found a dish brush made with horse hair and a 360 head. I worried because some said it was smelly and I had had a smelly horse hair brush before and it was overpowering. I kept feeling led to this brush and so I timidly bought it.
Hair is very sharp, most barbers know to quickly sweep it up so it does not present a problem. If you were to get a dirty hair sliver in your foot it can be hard to detect and cause infection. I learnt this a long time ago when I was learning to cut hair. Because hair is sharp, it workes excellently at scrubbing dishes. I also knew this by experience, but in order for it to work optimally it must be kept untangled and pliable. I have a tendency to scrub really hard because I have used those plastic-bristled-brushes for too long, but this grinding the bristles into dishes tangles and mattes hair and makes the less efficient, so I had to learn to be gentle and trust the many sharp hairs to do the scrubbing for me. As with brushing teeth, the number of strokes used is more effective than the force applied. Therefore, the horsehair dish mop requires no elbow grease. It does shed a hair now and then, but I have accepted it as part of the package and it doesn't bother me now. I keep my brush clean by rinsing and wringing excess water out when I am down using it and it has never become stinky. I rinse my dishes in hot water with white vinegar added when I feel like extra sanitation in needed and I will also rinse my brush in it at the end. Also, I never allow food particles to lived in the bristles. I love my brush so much, because it saves me so much time and effort! I have been considering a routine of daily brushing it's hair to keep the bristles from matting and extending the efficiency. I will update this post once I have that figured out.
So I had my dishwashing all figured out right?
Well, you know what they say about old habits dying hard? I moved to another state and through stress and displacement, my routine and emotional healing from former dishwashing habits were forgotten. My brush became matted and I tried to use the dishwasher again. After a few years, I was watching some YouTube channels I enjoyed about cooking and cleaning and feeling like I could stop running on autopilot. All three of the ladies on these YouTube channels handwashed all their dishes, didn't even want dishwashers in their kitchens and one of them said something about it that reminded me it is easier to handwash dishes than to use a dishwasher. I bought a fresh dishmop and fell in love with it all over again. I found my routine and lived happily ever after!
The nature of my move was traumatic and it caused all kinds of emotional and psychological distress. So I started to run on "autopilot," while I untangled the mess in my brain and my heart.The reason I forgot how to wash dishes is because, I was in survival mode and TV and popculture tell us we should be using a dishwasher, so I followed the path of least resistance. It is hard to do something different than you see everyone else doing, especially if you are not feeling particularly secure on your own. So, I want to provide support for others and myself, because we all have our own personal struggles and we are all trying to find our own best path to follow. Sometimes all the countless influences in our lives distract us and make it difficult to focus on what is really important to us.
Now I'm going to share my strategy for taking care of one of our most basic and persistent needs. Washing dishes. Washing dishes is important because we need to cook and eat with clean dishes to be healthy. If our dishes and counters are clean, we are more likely to cook our own food rather than going out to eat (which we all know is not healthy.) If washing dishes can be considered part to the deal whenever we eat (and is a painless process) then we can readily gwt up from the table, scrape the scraps off our plates, run a little water and wash our dishes before moving on with the rest of our day. It really is that simple. Some people force themselves to do this by only having enough dishes in their house for one meal at a time, but I feel like there is a much more pleasant way to accomplish this than force. (Which probably leads to eating out and disposables which aren't always pleasant either.)
Make a calm and pleasing picture in your mind of mealtime from start to finish. You enter a sparkling clean kitchen, fresh fruits and vegetables are placed in your shining sink and washed and then leisurely chopped and cooked. Utensils, cutting board and measuring spoons are washed as the pot boils and the pan sizzles or the oven bakes. The counters and sink are wiped clean with little effort. Then the meal is brought to the clean table already set and cheery. A prayer of thanks is given and everyone enjoys eating a nutritious meal. The plates and flatware are gathered, scraped free of scraps and placed in the sink of fresh hot water. The leftovers are carefully divided into appropriately sized containers and promptly stored in the refrigerator or freezer. The dishes are washed and put away. The table is washed and set for the next meal and the family returns to their day.
Does this sound like the kind of mealtimes you would enjoy? Do feel health and happiness would improve in your life with routine meals like this? If so, then priority must be placed on it. We must think ahead to whatever might disrupt it and make preparations. Put other worthy goals on hold long enough so you can sit and make a plan for the routine you want and any disruptions that may arise. Do you have small children vying for your attention? Plan to give their small hand something important to do (or learn) like washing measuring spoons, scrubbing potatoes and carrots, sweeping the floor where you are not standing, reporting the progress of dinner like a newscaster for the family, or whatever suits your family best.
Do you have frequent visitors? Make them a part of mealtime or block out time for their visits that won't interfere with your important work. Take into consideration how long they like to stay and make preparations for it. Etc.
Now how and what you cook is another topic altogether. I cover some of my own methods in other posts so I will refer you to those instead of making this post any longer than is needed.
This is the part where I tell you how I wash dishes with the right tool in the most efficient method, or how to use the tools I have introduced!
Here is my method:
Fill the sink with hot water.
Scrape as much debris from dishes as possible into the trash or compost or whatever you do with them.
Add dishes to the hot water and let soak until the water is barely hot and doesn't scald the hand.
If sanitation is desired, fill second basin with hot water and about ¼ cup of white vinegar.
Wet dishmop and coat with soap from dishsoap bar.
Pluck dish from right basin make a circle motion with dishmop lightly all over dish (somewhat like painting.)
Dunk dish back into water to remove soap.
If any food bit remains, repeat.
Place clean dish in vinegar water of left basin to sanitize.
If you are not sanitizing the load, simply rinse soap off with hot water from the tap.
Continue until all dishes are washed.
Place dishes in dish drainer to drip dry, or dry with a clean dish towel.
Wash counters with dish rag and soap, rinse dish rag and finish cleaning counters with vinegar water in left sink basin.
Drain water and wash both sink basins with the dish rag.
That's it! No more pruny fingers or red hands! With the solid dishsoap and 360 dishmop I get my dishes washed faster and with much less effort.
Now that I have the best tools, (that I even have fun using) next I had to figure out a system to keep washing my dishes and keep my kitchen clean!
I read home economics books which had also helped me develope my new method for washing dishes. I took note of the routines used by the ladies on YouTube who handwash all their household dishes, and I remembered reading about Ma washing dishes in, The Little House on the Prairie. What I realized was, no one ever used to leave dishes to the next meal in past generations. That would be self-inflicted pain! (Duh) Well, one might think, "hey, I don't want to take time out of my day to wash dishes after every meal! What a pain!"
What I came to realize is, the meal begins when I start cooking it and isn't finished until I've cleaned up after it. Clean up is part of eating (one could say the same of cooking) and if I want to eat (healthy meals at home), I have to accept the process.
Now that I wash the dishes immediately, soaking is not required and the dishes come clean easily. With the right tools, the process is no longer painful. With the developement of good habits, the cleaning gets done with a good attitude (no resentment!) I am happy and my kitchen is clean. Seems like a good solution to me!
I felt the need to share this journey because, simple housekeeping skills seem to be widely forgotten in our current era, but they are still sorely needed. I hope what I have shared will help even a few stuggling housekeepers transform their relationships with dishwashing, or at least help ya'll to find what works best for you if you are struggling like I was.
I'm wishing you all the best in your endeavors to keep a happy healthy homelife!
No comments:
Post a Comment