Part 5: How to Deal with All the Dishes

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The year I turned 30, filled what what now seems like an adorably naive amount of angst about that impending milestone, I decided I would run the New York City Marathon, just like my friend Rhonda had done the year before when she’d turned 30.

What you should know about me is that I’m the kind of person who likes the idea of being a runner, but doesn’t actually like running. So I hadn’t had much experience with it up to that point. But I’m fairly tenacious, so somehow in spite of a twisted ankle, a bout of heat exhaustion, a certain common running side effect remedied by Immodium AD, countless blisters and my general lack of enthusiasm for running, I trained all year and finished the marathon that November.

Why am I telling you this?

Because cooking on a more regular basis is a lot like training for a marathon. Everyone wants to congratulate you when you finish (why YES you can buy me a drink to celebrate!). But the success actually happened over the many weeks and months before that day. And it wasn’t just grit and tenacity that got you across that finish line. It was a lot of showers.

This is What No One Tells You

Before you become a runner, you’re partying on Saturday nights, enjoying leisurely Sunday champagne brunches, drinking a normal amount of water and eating whatever you want. And you’re styling your hair a few times a week.

But once you become a runner, all of that changes. The eating, the sleeping, the water, the Sunday mornings. And the showers. If you have long hair that needs to be styled before you can show up looking presentable, you’d better get ready to spend a lot of time in front of your mirror with a blow dryer. Every day. Or cut your hair. Because hair washing is part of running.

And Dishwashing is part of cooking

Before you become a cook, you’re breezing into the kitchen, popping food in the microwave, dropping your dishes into the dishwasher, and moving on with your life.

But once you become a cook, all of that changes. The planning, the prepping, the dealing with other people’s preferences. And the dishes. If you want to be the type of person who cooks for your family on a regular basis, you’d better get ready to spend a lot more of your time in the kitchen. And, more time doing dishes.

How to Embrace the Dishwashing

Making food is a job that includes cooking tasks as well as dishwashing tasks. Instead of viewing dishwashing as an unpleasant extra chore, it will make your cooking life easier to just embrace it all as part of one big job. It’s all part of kitchen time, and part of running your kitchen. And the good news is that when you start incorporating the dishes into the cooking routine, it actually doesn’t take that long.

So put some music on, and let’s get to it.

Kitchen Zones

Cooking goes a lot smoother and faster if your workspace is clean and orderly, as any professional cook will tell you. Here are some suggestions to set things up and get in the zone:

Separate clean vs. dirty zones

This is an approach borrowed from professional kitchens, but I find it helpful at home too. “Clean” areas are spaces where you’re preparing food, like your countertop or stove top. Everything that isn’t a part of food prep should go somewhere else. So things like dirty dishes, cleaning products, half-eaten sandwiches, random screwdrivers, schoolbooks, etc. should all be put away from your food prep spaces before you start cooking.

Designate a landing spot for dirty dishes

In my small home kitchen, I have limited counter space so while I’m cooking, my landing spot for dirty dishes is just the sink. When I’m working in my commercial kitchen, we’ve designated the counter next to the sink as the dirty dish area. We never put a clean dish or any food in the dirty dish area. It’s just for dirty dishes.

And a spot for clean dishes

Even if you have a dishwasher, you’ll need a spot where clean dishes can drip dry at least temporarily. A drying rack is an obvious solution, but we have such limited space in my home kitchen that I prefer not to have one. So instead, we have a specific countertop where we lay out a towel and prop dishes on it to dry. In my commercial kitchen we have a big rack for this. And in both spaces, we never put a dirty dish or any food, cleaning products or random non-food items in the clean dish area. It’s just for clean dishes.

Before You Start Cooking

When you’re ready to start cooking, you shouldn’t have to compete for elbow room with someone else’s clutter or dirty dishes. So when I walk into the kitchen to start cooking, I quickly clear the space first. Here’s what I do:

Put clean dishes away first

Clear the clean dishes from your clean dish area and empty the dishwasher before you start. This way you’ve got plenty of space to put things as you work.

Then empty the sink

If someone’s dirty dishes, coffee cups, etc. are in the sink, get them out of there before you start cooking. Now you have space to do what you need.

Clear off the counters, etc.

Clear away any clutter (or dishes!) so you have space to work, and you won’t have any non-food items in your food prep space.

Quick wipe-down

We use homemade vinegar spray in my house (3 parts white vinegar to 1 part water). I do a lightning-fast spray-and-wipe on kitchen counters, stove top and around the sink just before I start cooking so I know I have clean surfaces to work on.

During Cooking

It’s all about cleaning as you go. I hate to sound like someone’s annoying mother (!) but this will actually save you. If you pile up all the dirty dishes to do at the end, your space will become unworkable, and at some point you’ll have to start digging things out of the dirty pile to wash and use before the end anyway.

So here’s my system:

Adopt a flow

As you work, your dishes should flow from the food prep area to the dirty dish area, and then to the clean dish area once they’re washed. In my small home kitchen, things flow right-to-left. The key is to avoid criss-crossing clean and dirty items over the same workspace as you cook. And also, if you have multiple people in the kitchen at once, you don’t want to be bumping into each other. The right flow for your kitchen will depend on the layout, but once you have a flow things will go more smoothly.

Clean in small batches as you cook

As you’re cooking, put each dish or utensil in your dirty dish spot as soon as you’re done with it. Then, every time there’s a break in the action (eg, you’re simmering something for 15 minutes or whatever), wash whatever dishes have accumulated. If it’s a cooking utensil I might need later, or if it’s not dishwasher safe, I hand wash it and put it in my clean dish area. Otherwise I put it in the dishwasher.

Handwash sharp knives as you go

Sharp knives should never be left in the sink for safety reasons, and also because your good knives will get tarnished and ruined. You also don’t want to leave knives sitting out dirty on a cutting board for any length of time, because it tends to dull your knives more quickly, and also because a workspace cluttered with sharp objects tends to result in trips to the ER. So I wash sharp knives as I use them, instead of accumulating them with the other dirty dishes.

Organize the mess just before serving

As I’m about to serve the meal, I try to quickly gather/stack the remaining dirty dishes together in the sink, and run a little water into them. And if there’s some especially grimy or slimy mess on the counter, I’ll quickly wipe that up too. I want to leave space for us to deal with dirty dishes and leftovers after the meal, and I don’t want to leave an insane amount of mess for whoever will be doing dishes afterwards (which could totally be me, actually).

After Cooking

A lot of homes operate on the principle that whoever does the cooking doesn’t do dishes afterwards. This is a fine rule, but once I had kids and became the main cook, I realized that it actually makes my cooking life easier if I’m present for the cleanup too. Otherwise, the leftovers might be thrown out (!) or put in the fridge without proper labeling (!!). And although my husband and kiddos do wash the dishes, they usually skimp on wiping countertops afterwards.

So these days, I hang around the kitchen during cleanup and “help” with putting away the leftovers and wiping things down. Honestly, this usually only takes about 15-20 minutes, so it’s not a huge amount of time.

An alternative approach is to just say that everyone pitches in to do both the cooking and the dishes. I love this approach, but I’ve never been able to get the other humans in my house to go along with it consistently.

So you do you, but for whoever is doing the dishes afterwards, here are some suggestions:

Divide and conquer

In our house, everyone is responsible for rinsing their own plates and flatware and putting them in the dishwasher. Then, we usually have one person in charge of putting the leftovers away, while someone else starts in on washing the rest of the dishes. Once the leftovers are dispensed with, that person starts wiping down counters (because the dishes usually take longer). Note that we almost always have leftovers. This is on purpose! Check out my posts about planning ahead and batch cooking to find out why.

Sort dishes by dishwasher vs. handwashed

My system is to put everything that’s going into the dishwasher in my sink, and everything that needs to be handwashed on the counter next to it. Then it’s easy to quickly rinse the sink items and stick them in the dishwasher. Once the sink is clear, you have space to wash the handwashed items.

Use really hot water! And wear gloves!

Hot water is your best friend when you’re washing dishes, because it does half the work for you! It makes it much faster to cut through grease and stuck-on foods. I wear gloves so I can use the hottest water possible, and plow through dishes fast.

Wash the bottoms too

When pans, bowls, etc. are put away with greasy bottoms, that grease spreads to whatever they’re resting on. And nothing is worse than rolling up your sleeves and getting your cooking game face on, only to reach for a pan that’s still greasy from the last time it was used. Aaargh!!! So please scrub the bottoms with your hot soapy water while you’re cleaning the insides.

More Tips for Dishwashing Positivity

Here are some general tips for happy dishwashing and kitchen cleanliness vibes in your house:

Any dishes left in the sink should get a little hot water

If you’re going to leave a dish in the sink, don’t leave it there dry. Quickly run some (preferably hot) water into it before you walk away. The few seconds it takes to do this saves you tons of scrubbing time later.

Pyramid-stack dirty dishes in the sink

Don’t rest some huge plate or bowl precariously on top of a smaller dish! Instead, slide the bigger things underneath, stacking like sizes and shapes together. And set all the flatware off to one side together. This way you can see what you’re dealing with, and quickly run some hot water over everything all at once.

Bar Keeper’s Friend will get almost anything clean

Not sponsored, I’m just a fan! Bar Keeper’s Friend is your go-to for any baked-on spots that won’t come off with regular dishwashing soap. It’s safe to use on almost anything (but please read the label!) including enameled Dutch ovens and stainless pots and pans. (Very good for cleaning the bottoms!)

Consider running your dishwasher overnight, and emptying it each morning

When my kids were little, I realized that our mornings (and therefore whole days) would run much more smoothly if I could start the day with clean dishes put away, and an empty dishwasher ready to receive our dirty dishes all day long. So that’s when I started this routine. If my dishwashwer is at least 50% full (which is pretty much every night in my family of four), then I’ll set it to run that night. Then one of the first things I do as part of my morning routine is empty it and put away all other clean dishes so we can start fresh.

My fave dish scrubber is this Tawashi Vegetable Scrub Brush from Japan

Not sponsored, I just love it! The name says “vegetable” but it’s exactly the right size and shape to fit in your hand and scrub dishes, so that’s what I use it for. It’s easy to rinse the food particles out of the fibers, and it air-dries quickly. I much prefer this type of scrubber to a sponge or dishcloth, both of which tend to stay wet longer (which make them a breeding ground for bacteria). And I particularly hate using sponges on dishes, since they look identical to the sponges used for cleaning, so I can never be quite sure (yuck). This scrubber is made from coconut fibers or hemp (depending on the brand), and the packaging is all paper, so there’s no plastic involved. And it’s dishwasher safe, which brings me to…

Toss your dish scrubber in the dishwasher each time you run it

As I said, for me that’s each evening. Even if my family has done the dishes after dinner, I pass through the kitchen one last time before I go to bed, toss the scrubber into the top rack of the dishwasher and make sure it’s set to run overnight, so it will be freshly sanitized for me each morning. (This is another reason I don’t use a fancy scrubber with a handle btw.) You can use these methods to disinfect a sponge or scrubber if the dishwasher strategy doesn’t work for you. If you’re using a dishcloth, I would aim to replace it with a fresh one each day.

Use separate towels for dishes vs hands

This goes back to the idea of separating clean from dirty. You don’t want to dry clean dishes with the same towel someone might have wiped their greasy fingers on.

You can let your dishes drip dry guilt free

Letting dishes drip dry on a rack is the proper protocol in professional kitchens, since dish towels can harbor bacteria. If you like drying and putting away clean dishes immediately, then by all means you do you. But if you want to leave them until morning, go for it!

Chicken dinner Recipes

Here’s a collection of crowd-pleasing chicken recipes you can make for dinner. And hopefully, you’ll have some help with the dishes!

More recipe inspo for Cooking More

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