Tips On Washing Dishes
Washing dishes is something that, in my house, has always been an on-off thing. Either there are no dishes to wash, or there’s a pile.
Being a nerd, I actually gave some thought as to why we went through a dishes/no-dishes cycle. For example, I know that in economics, if you introduce a fixed lag between a random process and the reaction to that process, you get cycles. This can be seen in the “cattle cycle”, because of the lag between breeding and selling/slaughtering [1].
I believe our dishes were experiencing a similar cycle because of the significant lag between “breeding” dishes (getting them dirty), and eliminating them.
Lately, in an attempt to fix this, I switched to “continuous dish-washing”, meaning that if I needed a coffe cup, I would wash two cups, use one, and wash that one when done.
Result? More dishes!
Huh?
Well, it turns out that my girlfriend is a “threshold dish-washer”, and washes all the dishes, but only once they’ve gone past a certain threshold.
So what was happeneing was that I washed just enough so that the pile never reached her threshold, and so the dishes would stay in the sink.
Lesson: find out what mode you and your cohabitants prefer, and make sure you aren’t cancelling each other out. Since I’ve known friends who actually moved out because of fights over dishes, I thought I’d share this little tidbit. They were probably just different types of dishwasher.
PS: This post is totally random, and has no direct relation to HabitShaper.
But, at least I doing well with my “writing daily” goal!
Actually, this is quite helpful! Thank you!
I think I will move out because my roommate is driving me nuts about cleaning issues! I again brought up the idea of a chore chart last night and she said she would give it a try, so hopefully that will make living with her more bearable for now.
ps: I too am typically a threshold dishwasher! If there is a rule, like “leave no dishes in the sink at night” I can conform to that too though.
Thanks!
It’s a pleasant surprise when a random post is even a little helpful to someone.
I’ve been there with the roommate cleaning troubles…
PS: I know of someone who is working on a program for creating quick and fair chore charts. http://www.cleaningplannerplus.com/