why you should do the dishes right away

April 17th, 2007

Yes, I mean now, not later, right now! There are several reasons why you should do the dishes as soon as you finish using them, during cooking or right after, before you sit down to eat:

  1. Most food tends to wash off the easiest right after you're done cooking. Most cooked food is at least a little greasy and that grease will come off right away with almost no detergent, but if you let it rest and cool, you'll be pumping detergent into that pan and scrubbing several times before you're satisfied that it's gone. Grease gets nasty if you let it settle, so don't. Btw this is just as true for fruit.
  2. You are not keen to look at food, and especially leftovers, after you eat. Food is the last thing on your mind after a meal, and doing the dishes is a little icky (and the level of ickyness increases the longer you wait), even though you know you ate this a little while ago. If you wash dishes right after you stop using them you're still in the spirit of making food, so it feels natural.
  3. If you get into the habit of doing dishes as part of cooking, you don't have that extra chore to do later.

Not to mention that time-to-clean-dishes is greatly reduced, because they get washed right after use and don't contribute to stacks in the sink. Everyone wins.

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6 Responses to "why you should do the dishes right away"

  1. erik says:

    This is such a student post :D

  2. Caster says:

    dishwasher ftw :P
    also, "right after, before you sit down to eat" - and let the meal get cold? never!

    but yeah I wish my former roommates at dorm would have obeyed this, or at least within a week after the cooking...

  3. numerodix says:

    Either you are super eager to eat boiling hot food or you employ two kitchens' worth of dishes if you can't do the dishes before the meal gets cold.

    Dishwasher is no good for cook ware. Some of that stuff is plastic. And to wash a pan in the dishwasher 3 times a day not only takes two hours per wash, it's also a gargantuan waste,

  4. sinx says:

    I do it this way: put pizza into microwave owen, take it out, eat on the silly glass plate (from oven) and later i put it on the running water with little bit of detergent ... ;) and it looks clean for me, but eating pizza each day is not heyalthy so i also cook other things. Generally I clean dishes right after eating ... and it is made in "no time" ;) (i hope you understand my comment, I feel that my english is getting worse every day)

  5. Graham says:

    What about a healthy compromise? Once you're done eating, scrape any solids into the trash, then fill up your plates/bowls/pans with water, so they're relatively simple to clean.

  6. numerodix says:

    @sinx: frozen pizza? you're practically Norwegian, it's officially our national dish, I kid you not.

    @gray: not good enough, it's still dishes in the sink, they shouldn't be there.