Daily Deals from a Nerd Mom

Anyone who knows me in real life knows I have a deeply personal grudge against washing dishes by hand. I will Tetris an entire dinner party’s worth of dishes into a dishwasher before I hand wash a single mug. I have soaked pans “overnight” for multiple days. I have let dishes stack up in the sink simply because the dishwasher was too full to take on one more bowl. I am not proud of this, but I am being honest.

Loading and unloading the dishwasher is genuinely one of my most dreaded chores, so the sink and counters would pile up fast. The two younger nerdlings tag-team the unloading and the teen or I handle loading it, but sometimes I just don’t feel like dealing with the complaining when I announce it’s chore time. (Working on it.) And with barely any counter space to begin with, it doesn’t take much for the whole kitchen to feel like a disaster zone.

Then I ran out of dishwasher soap.

I know. I could have just bought more. But somewhere in the middle of a cleaning and decluttering phase I’d been on, the idea of letting the sink fill up while I waited felt wrong. So I just started washing dishes by hand. And something completely unexpected happened.

My kitchen stayed clean.

Like, actually clean. Not “I just did a big clean, enjoy this for the next 20 minutes” clean. Consistently, daily clean. Sinks empty. Counters clear. A small handful of things to put away in the morning instead of a full dishwasher load.

The shift that made it work was one simple rule: wash your dish as soon as you’re done with it. No setting it in the sink to deal with later. No “I’ll get to it.” Just rinse, wash, done. Everyone caught on faster than I expected. I’ll sometimes give a reminder as they’re heading to the kitchen, but mostly they just do it on their own now. I even wash as I cook, so by the time dinner hits the table, most of the prep mess is already gone.

My husband left his plate and fork in the sink one evening along with his pan and spatula on the stove. I texted him a photo with one word: “GROUNDED.” He replied “sorry! love you!” He has not done it since.

I’m not standing over anyone like a drill sergeant. The habit just formed on its own, which honestly still surprises me. They say a habit takes 28 days to stick – we’re about halfway there and it already feels like second nature.

Oh, and the dishwasher soap my husband bought two days after we ran out? Still sitting there unopened.

I would have laughed at this version of myself a month ago. I genuinely thought life without a dishwasher was a form of suffering. Turns out it was the dishwasher making my kitchen harder to maintain, not easier. My mom always said she preferred washing by hand and I thought she was completely out of her mind. I owe her an apology.

Do you prefer the dishwasher or hand washing?