One of the original intents of helpful snowman was to answer questions. But we quickly realized that
- This required people to send shit, and
- This also requires some level of expertise in something
Undaunted, we’ve forged on. And after about 7 years, received a request for help:
Hey Pete,
I’m writing because we brainstormed, and thought it would be good to incorporate your advice about a thing.
You don’t have a dishwasher, and have done dishes by hand for years. How did you learn to do dishes by hand? How do you get them completely clean, and free of food bits, oil, and film? We’ve tried more soap, the hottest water, and scrubbing with a scrubber sponge, and the results have been somewhat inconsistent. Is there anything else to know?
That’s all. Feel free to reply here, by phone, by newsletter, or by handwritten response, tied to the leg of a tiny weasel riding a bird.
Best,
Saint Aloysius With Dirty Dishes
First, off, thanks for writing. Also first off, which I guess is technically second off, I’m sorry I changed your name to something so stupid. I had a hard time coming up with a good geographical rhyme for “dishes.”
Fortunately, you’ve written in about a topic that I know a little something about. Namely, the topic of living like a scumbag without access to modern appliances, or some asshole on House Hunters International. Seriously, they always have such a big thing about dishwashers. “I want to move to Prague, but fuck it, if I can’t have a dishwasher, I’ll just kill myself instead.”.
Really, any questions relating to not having a dishwasher, washing machine, self-constructed ladders, doing a large-scale plaster project inside an apartment with carpet—all of these types of things are subjects I can speak to. Just so long as I’m not legally responsible.
As someone who’s gone a long time with dishes, I have some pieces of advice, which I’ll put into three overall courses of action.
Course The First: Handwashing Dishes. Like A Peasant
I felt I should add some bona fides: I’ve been handwashing dishes most of the last ten years, and I’m a pretty tidy dude. Also, I was briefly a professional pearl diver. Which is a slang term for dishwasher as opposed to the other thing it’s a slang term for, jacking off at the bottom of a pool, or the thing it’s a literal term for, diving to find pearls.
Washing dishes sucks. People are animals. Especially at a buffet, and especially at the type of buffet that people treat primarily as an endless portal of ranch dressing. Also, one time this really bitchy lady who worked at the restaurant came back into the dish area, smashed a dish full of food on the floor, and walked out. This is when I discovered that this woman was the manager’s wife, and also that when a manager’s wife throws a fit about something and smashes a plate in the dish bay, you will be cleaning it up, giving you plenty of time to start understanding why you’re called “dish bitch.”
For startsies, let’s talk water temperature. I have a trick to at least figure out whether this is part of the problem. Heat a pot of water on the stove, then pour it into the sink. Now, you don’t want to wash your dishes in boiling water, so give it a little time to cool, but optimum temp is something like 120-degrees Fahrenheit, just a little hotter than excruciating. It can be hard to get super hot water from the fixture, except I happen to know you live in Phoenix, so the resting temperature of the tap water there is probably like a billion degrees anyway. Unlikely this is your issue, but it’s an easy one to investigate and check off as not being a problem. Also, if you do this, and especially if you have dry skin, wear gloves. I think one of the reasons dish gloves used to be a lot more common was because a dishwasher was less common, so a lot more handwashing was going on.
Next, let’s talk detergent. I noticed you talked about upping the amount, but oddly enough I would suggest reducing the amount. It doesn’t take much. I sucked at chemistry, probably because my chemistry teacher sounded like Kermit the Frog, was kind of weird, and taught us the chapters completely out of order, moving us from parts of an atom to the ways a nuclear reactor works. I feel like there’s a missing step in there. Anyway, one thing I know about chemistry is that soap is less about scrubbing the soap itself into stuff, more about getting enough soap involved in the water so that the water can do its thing. Rather than adding, try reducing the amount of soap and mixing it more completely in the dish water. A big ass bottle of Dawn should last pretty much forever. You should be considering leaving it behind when you move out of an apartment, depending on whether there’s a decent amount left or so much that you just can’t stand carrying more shit down the stairs so FUCK IT.
As for grease, I would suggest eating nothing with grease or oil. HAHA, JK! That would mean you could eat…raw potato? Anyway, goodbye to double stacks blended up for maximum chugability.
My real suggestion for grease is to make sure you’re not letting greasy stuff soak with non-greasy stuff, because that shit spreads. It is the virulent herpes of dishes. Also, wash in order of greasiness, washing your greasiest stuff last. Keeping the greasy stuff separate makes a big difference and makes the job easier.
Let’s talk rinsing too. RInsing is AS important as washing, if not more. Sometimes streaks and stuff are from leftover soap. You might need more rinse water, to change it out halfway through your dishes. And make sure you’re scrubbing again, just the way you did when washing. AND, if you can, use a separate sponge/cloth/whatever to wash and rinse. That keeps your rinse sponge grease-free and less soapy.
Water itself is also pretty dirty (to the eye). I have a drying rack over the sink, and it’s got two rows. The glasses on the bottom row catch water dripping from the top, and these leave mineral deposits. This is why drying is also an important step. If you’re having water problems, sometimes you can add a little vinegar to your rinse water. This will basically evaporate away, and it’s pretty handy for glasses.
Course The Second: Dangerous Habits
It sounds like a lot. And it is. I think the common wisdom is to wash the dishes every day if you’re handwashing. Yes, this is ideal for your dishes. But not ideal for having some semblance of a real life. There are a billion things we try to do every day, and building those good habits is difficult (flossing, Duolingo, not farting in your office constantly).
The other thing to consider, a dishwasher washes each dish for like an hour because it can wash them all at once. Handwashing is faster, but let’s not kid ourselves, most of us don’t spend even 5 minutes on a single cup. Meanwhile, in the machine, that single cup is getting attention for an entire hour. Which is why I might also suggest giving yourself a set amount of time to do dishes every day, and doing the dishes that long. Finishing early is not allowed, you’ve just got to move to another cleaning job if that happens. But if you haven’t finished all the dishes, it’s cool. You put in your 20 minutes, drain the sink, you’ll get to the rest tomorrow. Some days are more dish-intensive than others.
Also, to help build the habit, do something you like while washing the dishes. If you like orange Jolly Ranchers, have them only while you do the dishes. Pick out a podcast you like, and ONLY listen while doing the dishes. Drink. But again, don’t come crying to me when you’re struggling in AA because you were shitfaced every day, making plates dirty on purpose to have another hit off the bottle.
Last, consider reducing the number of dishes you keep in the home. When you only have 5 forks, you can only go so long without washing the dishes, and even when they’re piled up it’s only so bad. In my experience most people have at least twice as much of that stuff as they need, all in anticipation of having parties over and having guests, which all of us intend to do and most of us rarely do. And besides, if you have guests, nobody’s going to complain when you say, “We’re out of glasses, so everyone just pass around this bottle of bourbon.” This, by the way, is the prime example of how classy parties are never as fun. Don’t get crazy, don’t have one fork per person. I have 5 of each thing, as one guy, and that seems to be a pretty good number.
Course The Third: Giving Up (A Little)
I have some black plates, and they really show things like grease, smudges, whatever. I got black and white Fiesta stuff from my mom, okay? I don’t want people to read this and get the wrong idea, like I’m eating off all black plates and with black utensils like a bad guy from The Crow or something.
As a handwasher by circumstance all these years, I’ve just had to learn to accept that some dishes show more wear, grease, and smudges no matter what I do. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t leave like a whole shrimp stuck to a plate (I don’t know why I used shrimp as an example. I don’t think I eat shrimp ever), or a fleck of oatmeal, even though I’m convinced a dried oat will stick to the side of a space shuttle as it exits Earth’s atmosphere. What I’m saying is that one reasonable course of action is to say that there’s a difference between “clean” and “clean enough.” When a glass isn’t shiny…it might still be clean enough.
To put this another way, a really effective glass cleaner is Lemon Pledge. In fact, next time you’re in a hotel, sniff those glasses. Oftentimes it’s a little spray of Lemon Pledge in there rather than legit glass cleaner. Point being, something can look super clean and not be, so it stands to reason that it can look dirty and still be fairly clean.