My husband and I have an ongoing battle when it comes to the dishes. We do have a dishwasher but I never had one growing up. The first time I ever had one was when I bought my place several years ago and since I didn’t know how to work it, I would wash my dishes in the sink then use the dishwasher as a drying rack. Because of this, my husband thinks that I’m terrible at loading the dishwasher (he’s right) and so he wants to be in charge of the dishes…which would be totally fine, if he actually did it.
See, here’s the vicious cycle that happens all the time: (1) the dishwasher gets run but it never gets emptied; (2) because of this, all current dirty dishes simply get piled into the sink; (3) the pile keeps growing until it’s so tall and precariously stacked, something is sure to fall and break until (4) I get fed up, empty the dishwasher of the clean dishes then load it with the dirty dishes and then (5) my husband complains about the awful way I’ve loaded the dishwasher.
The other thing my husband loves to do, especially with things that either don’t fit in the dishwasher or are supposed to be washed by hand, is soak dirty dishes. The grill we made chicken on? Soak it. The gigantic pasta pot? Soak it. Wine glasses? Soak ‘em. The problem is that he’ll leave things to soak and then they’ll just sit there. For days and days on end. Then other things, like utensils and small plates get put into the pot of soaking water (which has at that point turned cold and is no longer soapy) only to end up greasy or covered in tomato sauce. So not only do the original dishes never get cleaned but then the other ones end up dirtier than when we first used them.
My husband’s idea of being “in charge of the dishes” is to pretty much ignore them until we no longer have room in the sink to stack any more dishes and we’re eating off of paper plates with our hands. We’re gonna need a bigger sink.
Glad to know I’m not alone in this everyday battle!!!!
My husband takes this one step further by leaving plates with food still on it and recyclables in the sink for days as well.
LOL!!! Mine likes to take the dishes that I MYSELF have soaking and empty out all the soaking water and stack them up on the counter… for several days. Then whatever it was I was TRYING to soften up by soaking has gotten hard and crusty again not to mention, they take up counter space. = ANNOYING!
While we’re at it. I will clean the entire kitchen and he’ll go RIGHT behind me and put a dirty dish in there. I’m like, ‘I JUST cleaned the ENTIRE kitchen, could you wash out that ONE bowl’
ANNNNNDDDDD… WHY must every dish in our possession be dirty before he cleans the kitchen and he told me a few of days ago he was going to clean the kitchen… See first paragraph above… smh.
My husband is the direct opposite of this. He is charged with doing the dishes (I cook, he cleans). BUT. He will jump up in the middle of the meal and wash my dish as soon as I am finished with it. Even if he is in mid-bite, he jumps up and washes (or rinses and places, nearly sanitary, in the dishwasher just to be absolutely sure there is no germ anywhere near the dish). I guess mine is better, but it’s still annoying to have him jumping up and down in the middle of meals. I’m sure the dishes could wait at least until we have both completely finished eating.
There really is only one solution to this, and I truly wish I had the room for it:
You need TWO dishwashers. You load the first one, and when it’s filled, you run it. You then use what’s in the clean dishwasher, and load the dirty things in the second dishwasher. When that one is full, you run that one, and the other one should pretty much be empty.
Rinse and repeat, as it were
I read of someone who’s actually done this, and it really sounds like a dream come true.
I wish I could laugh about this but, right now we are in separate bedrooms over something else entirely.
But, to the dishes. We too supposedly have the same agreement. I cook & clean up, he does the dishes. Matter of fact the only things he is asked to do is dishes, take out the trash & carry the laundry downstairs to the laundry room. Unfortunately, the dishes pile up to the precarious heights and the laundry sits in our closet until it begins to stink or someone is in desperate need of clean clothes. I have to say he does empty most of the trash throughout the house every week in time for the trash collectors.
I do soak lasagna pans & other such like as our dishwasher is not the best & I too did not grow up with this luxury but, handwashed all the dishes with my brothers after every meal. So in the end I load & empty the dishwasher because the whole putrid mess in the sink starts to get me a bit nauseated.
I do realize I cannot change him. He is who he is and this is who I married. I just wish he would also accept me for who I am and quit with trying to change me.
Hmmm, anyone who wont do a job then complains about how I DO the job better watch out. Especially if I am standing over the dishwasher full of stabby knives and bitey tongs.
Just feed him all his dinners on greasy plates.
Amen!
It’s just my husband and I so what I did was only buy very limited amount of dishes. There is no way they can pile up that way.
But that doesn’t completely squash his ability to annoy me in the dishes dept. Last night he said he’d get the dishes. I thought great, I can wake up without having to do them first thing and just sit down and enjoy coffee. So I do that, take one sip of my coffee and it tasted like dirty dishwater so I had to throw it out and make more. He had washed the dirty, oil pans first and then washed the glasses….with the same sponge.
My son just walked by and saw your blog on the screen; asked, “Is that your new blog title?”
Ha! You are not alone.
P.S. That’ OUR sink… except we have FIVE annoying people contributing to it’s contents. Yeesh.
At least he doesn’t do what I do with oversized pots, kettles, etc. I take them outside and hose them clean with the garden hose.
My husband and I have a deal that if I spend an hour cooking his dinner, that he will be nice and wash dishes….this is great until it comes time to actually do the dishes. He makes promise after promise to get it done, but there is always something more important (like a video game). So he puts the dishes in the sink to soak “until later”. Later translates to 3 WEEKS LATER, to the point that I can no longer stand near the sink because the smell is so horrifying. But if I offer to do the dishes, he says “No, I’ll do them in a minute”, and they continue to sit in the sink. And instead of washing the dirty bowl to use, he opens the cabinet and TAKES OUT A CLEAN BOWL! Ugh! I end up washing my half, while his half continues to sit and grow mold.
I let things soak in the sink if I’ve made a lasagna or something that I know the dishwasher alone won’t take care of. The problem arises when he sees the soaking pot or pan and puts things in it because it’s there. Then I have to empty the pot without breaking anything or getting stabbed by a wayward fork. In his defense though, he’s usually pretty on top of the dishes situation.
We realized long ago that I hate to empty the dishwasher and he hates to load it. Thus, I load and he empties. If one of us slacks off and doesn’t get it done that day, the next day the slacker has to do *both* jobs. Works pretty well.
Your husband and my husband must be long lost brothers.
Do you also have a dog that he’s “in charge of brushing” and complains about your constant nagging regarding the dog hair you find in diapers, dishes, blankets and the bottom of your socks??
My husband takes the dishes outside and hoses them off. He says it’s easier, quicker and more sanitary (?)
Oh gosh! I just started reading this blog and it’s beyond funny. It hurts in a really tickly help-me way.
It seems like the root of the problem is that the dishwasher isn’t getting unloaded. Is that something you can take responsibility for, and let him do the loading? Or, if you don’t mind loading the dishwasher but it’s just the criticism you don’t care for you could load the dishwasher and then alert him he has 30 minutes to redo it before you run it. Then if complains you can tell him he had fair warning. It sounds like he would probably enjoy rearranging things after you’ve started it.
Another possible issue with all these cook/clean division of labor arrangements is that the cleaner may not realize it isn’t possible to cook with a sinkful of dirty dishes. If they were also cooking, they’d figure out pretty quick they needed to clean the kitchen before they could begin preparing a meal.
The larger issue is that women do far more housework than men do, even when both partners are employed full time. I don’t have a solution for that one! I suspect men do a lot more housework and child raising after getting divorced then when they were married (sadly.) You know, in that brief moment between wives.
I am a 23 year old guy and I love washing dishes. The more in the sink to wash the better. Really, seeing dishes in there makes me happy and I get straight to it. Don’t know why I am how I am but I am how I am
I am one of the lucky one’s (so people tell me) my husband washes up because that is the deal in our house. Only problem with this for me is he always goes on and on about the floors being sticky, or the spills that come about from cooking, or I could be more of a tidy cook, so I would rather wash up my self! I am not that untidy in the kitchen, really i’m not! Thinking about starting a blog on this husband of mine – it would go something like this “Role Reversal” because he is so picky and anal about a tidy house it drives me crazy, he literally gets under our feet to vacuum clean while we are still at the table eating. Already looked into the OCD but he doesn’t qualify. If you think I should start this blog let me know! can I say that on this great blogger?
My husband’s idea of helping with the dishes (when he only volunteers to do when I am slamming plates and silverware in the sink due to sheer frustration from never getting any help around the house) is to dip the dishes in soapy water and then rinse them. Dried on chunks of food and greasy film and all. Yeah, that’s a big help.