How to wash the dishes
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This week’s question comes to us from Michael Calore:
What's the best way to wash the dishes?
TL;DR: If they’re dirty, wash them.
Let’s start by asking ourselves a simple question: Would you rather be right or happy? Ok, it seems like a simple question, and for some of you it might be. Congrats. But child… it is not a simple question. (“Both” doesn’t cut it here. You have to choose.) It’s the kind of question that relationships are built, or shattered, on.
Would you rather be right or happy?
First off, like many of you who just screamed “why not both?,” I also want to live in a world where that is possible. And sure, every once in a while the universe throws us a solid and we get to make one a decision where “right” and “happy” and magically interlinked in a way where the choice is easy and obvious. For example, when you get up off the couch and say to your partner(s) “I’m getting a seltzer. Do you want one?” and they say “Yes, please.” That is both the right thing to do and a thing that makes all parties happy. I suggest you take full advantage of moments like those.
But for every moment like that there is a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Dishes that were put there by multiple people at various times throughout the day. One of the most common occurrences of the human experience. If you happen to be at home right now, and there’s a kitchen full of dirty dishes (there probably is), I implore you to stand in front of it and ask yourself the question: would you rather be right or happy?
And while you do that, let’s go over some background about me:
I grew up in Philadelphia. And at the risk of over-generalizing (I’m not), Philadelphians (at least the ones who were raised there, and not the ones who were priced out of Brooklyn) are very special people. We have a way of doing things that makes perfect sense to other Philadelphians, while confusing most everyone else. For example: we punch police horses (they’re technically cops), we believe parking regulations are bullshit—but an iron board in a snow-shoveled space is sacred, a greased pole is Everest, screaming “STEP DOWN” is a kindness, and proper cheese comes from a can. We live by a set of rules that works for us. And when you ask a Philadelphian if they’d rather be right than happy, they immediately think a fight is about to start. Mostly because they want to start it. Then they will say something like “Being right is what makes me happy.” I know this, because it came out of my own mouth. But we’ll get to that later.
(Small aside, I’m writing this while wearing my Wawa hoodie. Of all my hoodies, this is the one that gets the most response from strangers when I’m out and about in San Francisco. It’s like a magnet. I’ll be at the supermarket and from behind me I’ll hear “Yo! You from Philly?!” and then we have a ten minute conversation. It’s not the worst. MAGA Philadelphians tend not to move to SF.)
I also grew up Catholic. (Now an alumni, thank you.) And if you know anything about the Catholic Church (Yes, everyone was an expert in the Catholic Church last week.) you know that it’s built on a cornerstone of guilt and blame. Every action requires an assignment of blame, followed by the corresponding guilt. For example, we are not out of eggs, someone ate the last of the eggs. Now the Catholic twist here is that it’s in your best interest to replace the eggs that someone else ate because now you can make them feel like shit for eating the eggs and making you go out and get eggs. Got it? So when you ask a Catholic if they’d rather be right than happy they’ll blurt out some bullshit like “I’ll be happy when I’m sitting at the right hand of the Lord!”
These are two giant cornerstones of what made me who I am. Two ways of being that were introduced to me at such a young age that they’re baked into the foundation. So the first time someone asked me if I’d rather be right than happy, I broke. I was ready to fight! And the person asking me that question was my wife, Erika.
Erika hates washing dishes. (For the record, I asked her if she was ok with me telling you that, and she said yes.) We’d been living together for a while and the kitchen sink had become a battleground. We’d tried a few different methods of keeping the sink clean. Mostly, the rule was that if you dirtied it you washed it. Which sounds soooo reasonable. Except it’s not. People have shit going on, they’re out there trying to live their lives. Sometimes you need to rush out the door to catch a bus, or get to a meeting on time, or whatever. It’s reasonable to think that you’ll wash that coffee mug later. It’s also understandable that with everything that happens throughout the day, it’s the last thing on your mind when you finally get home. Notice how reasonable I’m being? Yeah, this is after twenty-plus years of therapy.
Sadly, this was all happening before twenty-plus years of therapy. This was me standing in front of a dirty sink arguing about how everyone needed to—no, had promised to!—clean their own dishes. How hard can it be to wash a mug? Why make rules if we’re not going to follow them? It’s the right thing to do! (This was the Philadelphian coming out.) After arguing for a while I’d just go ahead and wash the mug and mention it at least three times that night. (This was the Catholic coming out.)
So on this particular sink event, as I’m going on and on about how I’m right, she asks me if I’d rather be rather be right than happy. And I’m pretty sure I answered as stupidly as you think I did. Right. Right. Right.
The second person who asked me that question was the aforementioned therapist, as I was complaining about the dirty sink yet again, during a session. And because she hates it when I quote her in the newsletter, I won’t. Instead I’ll just fast-forward to the part where I actually answer your question.
If I’m the first one to wake up, I’ll make coffee. Nothing happens without coffee. While it’s brewing I’ll clear the dish rack of anything that might still be there from the day before. Then I take a cursory dig through the sink. I’ll pull out the bigger items, like pots, pans, bowls, collanders, etc, and stack them on the stove. (We have a small kitchen, so there isn’t a lot of extra space.) That tends to leave glasses, mugs, flatware, and annoying small things. I’ll toss some detergent (Dawn, cause the baby ducks) on everything and fill the glasses with hot water to get some bubbles going. By now the coffee’s brewed, so I take a coffee break. (This is also where everything starts if Erika wakes up first, and the coffee’s already made.) After a cup of coffee, I attack the glassware, starting with the most fragile first, (Scotchbrite sponge, look I tried Sponge Daddy. If you like Sponge Daddy, that’s great!), then mugs and flatware, starting with the large knifes cause they go in the farthest compartment. Once all that is gone I take the opportunity to clean the sink. Yes, I’m about to get it dirty again, but it’s easier to clean things if the sink is clean, so we clean it. Time for another coffee break. Then I pull in plates, pots, pans, etc. Because I live in California, I don’t run water unless I need it. So there’s a lot of turning the water on and off. Coffee break. Then I take a walk around the apartment looking for errant mugs and glasses that might have been left around, bring them in and wash those. Once all the dishes are done I wipe down all the counters and see if the stovetop needs a cleaning. (It gets a scrubbing Saturday, regardless.) Finally, I sweep the floor. Then another coffee break.
(A note on dishwashers: we don’t have one. Don’t have the space. I had one in a previous apartment, and after the initial joy of using it for a couple of weeks, I went right back to washing by hand.)
(A note on when to wash the dishes: some folks have told me they have to clean their kitchen in the evening because of critters. So yeah… know your critter situation and behave accordingly.)
The answer to the question is that I’d rather be happy than right. And it’s neither an easy question, nor an easy shift to make. For the record, everything I described above takes maybe ten minutes out of my morning. (Once you subtract the coffee breaks.) Every argument we had about washing the dishes (…all initiated by me) took longer than that. Plus no argument ever cleaned the sink. As an added bonus, I leave the house every morning having already accomplished something, and that feels pretty good.
Obviously, because you’re all smart, you realize that we’re talking about more than washing dishes here. I grew up with an attitude of trying to figure out who I could blame when something went wrong, or didn’t happen the way I wanted it to happen, or didn’t happen the right way. Maybe some of you did as well. It was very important to be able to blame someone. It was very important to be able to point at someone. It was very important to be right. My god, you’re more than halfway to righteous!
And like I said, these things were drilled into me at a very young age. They were foundational. Part of my identity. And if I’m being honest with you, they’re still there. I can feel them. But you don’t have to be who you were built to be. You can choose.
You can be happy. Maybe it starts with washing the dishes.
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