A skillful S-tier parent will make their children do all these tasks eventually. I haven’t managed this yet, but I’ve seen parents who have.
It’s an amazing sight to behold. I manage to do it perhaps once a month.
Just the clean the kitchen each time after you cook.
It takes less time and effort to clean it as you go.
Maybe (probably) I’m just stupid and clumsy but cleaning as I go means cooking takes even more time and effort. I do it exactly the other way around, to minimize cleaning time I only clean my kitchen every few days when my counter gets too full. YMMV.
Stop reminding me god damn it
The biggest culprit to a dirty kitchen is someone that has never heard the phrase “if you got time to lean, you got time to clean”. My wife hates this philosophy, but when I’m done cooking and ready to plate, the kitchen is spotless. It must be witchcraft!
I absolutely despise the patronizing and bellittling nature of that phrase, and the tone it is usually delivered in…
… But at the same time… cleaning as you cook a complex meal with multiple steps and lots of involved cookware… really really does cut down on overall time spent in the kitchen, and makes for an actually usable and sanitary kitchen.
Worst case scenario, you’ve got everything but the final used cookware soapily soaking in the sink when you serve and eat… and then right after you eat, you rinse and dry those off, and then clean the final stage cookware and serving plates/utensils.
If you don’t have the time or energy to handle cooking and cleaning a complex meal… you don’t have the time and energy to just cook it, and then be overwhelmed later by the accumulation of ‘dish cleaning debt’.
…
It can be somewhat challenging to learn how to cook and clean at the same time, and avoid getting soap into your food or visa versa… but it is by no means impossible, and is a huge time saver… and you can feel proud of yourself for legitimately learning an extremely useful life skill.
If you just set a rule for yourself or your apartment or house that … there should basically never be any dishes left in the sink for over an hour… you avoid the massive pile up of dishes and always being overwhelmed and avoiding them… because your rule basically enforces breaking things down into cleaning smaller amounts of dishes at a time, and it also forces the generally positive experience of cooking and eating to be integrated with the generally negative experience of cleaning dishes.
…
I have, waaaay too many times, lived with people who just pile up dishes somehow in the sink and dishwasher, such that it becomes an actual biohazard (I mean it, rotting food and mold, swarms of flies in a sink that hasn’t been cleaned in two weeks or more, nobody can even remember if the dishes in the dishwasher are all clean, all dirty, or a mix of both)…
…and that means if you wanna cook anything with a commonly used piece of cookware, ok, now you gotta pull it out of the ratsnest in the sink, hope nobody threw any knives in there to cut your hands on, and get an infection from the festering biohazard… and then also you must now somehow clean this cookware while the sink is completely full.
Which means you have to just clean the entire sink to begin to be able to clean the major cookware you need to begin to cook the food.
…
Hell, the solution that ended up working best for me was to just also throw on a ‘no dishwasher’ rule.
Force yourself to associate the actual cleaning cost with whatever you are cooking… and the result was that I ended up with a mental health affirming regular structured rule/habit, that I actually ended up genuienly enjoying, as another source of ‘i actually accomplished something today’… as well as basically ingraining a better subconscious ability to understand what level of cooking complexity I actually had the energy to prepare.
If you find yourself being often overwhelmed by what you want to make… learn to make simpler recipes, get a rice cooker or crockpot and just have basically a constant supply of something approximating a stew, get an airfryer or toaster oven for rapidly heating up smaller portions, salads are great for you and often have a pretty low prep time.
Save the dishwasher for actual schedule emergencies and hosting an occasional get together or party.
…
Basically, treat dishes as credit card debt.
Pay that shit off ASAP, otherwise, it’ll snowball into disaster.
Remove the ‘i can handle the dishes/pay this off later’ from your mental approach to it, directly associate all the costs together in a very near time frame.
…
tldr; that saying needs a makeover or rebrand.
Maybe:
Clean as you go, dish pile don’t grow.
something like that? I am not really a … sloganeer.
Okay… but while you were typing all of this, you could have been cleaning. The motto stands.
Got nothing to clean.
Because … I follow these rules… and keep everything clean.
My wife hates this philosophy, but when I’m done cooking and ready to plate, the kitchen is spotless.
You know, I’m firmly of the philosophy that a big part of being a good chef is sweeping up behind yourself as you go. Minimizing the volume of cookware and number of appliances I use is also important.
But come on, dude. You’re not wiping splattered oil off a hot stove unless you’re a masochist. That cast-iron isn’t getting touched until it’s had time to cool down.
You have to prioritize. The cast iron pans are one of the only things that can wait because you never really have to clean them spotless anyways.
That being said, I can always use an oven mitt and my cast irons are so long seasoned that I could leave them overnight in the sink w/o a problem other than a little surface rusting on the bottom.
The phrase is used to shame people for taking amy breaks at work, which is why people tend to hate it.
Cleaning as you go (if time is available) does result in a lot less work at the end and more about efficiency than laziness. For meals that create a lot of dishes, having someone else clean as you go is even better than puttibg it all on to cook!
I wish my kitchen was just a little bit bigger lol. My fiance gets mad when I’m all up in her space, kitchen is off limits when she’s cooking.
We have had only tiny kitchens and it did take a decade to get the dance down to both be productive in the same space when making some meals. Opening the oven involves an announcement and a confirmation!
There are a few where she needs all the space and I just clean up after. Most of mine have breaks in between steps where I can clean things as I go.
I always refuse all helpers in the kitchen.
Not because of the size, but just fuck no. I don’t want to clean up after some “helper” who managed to slice a single cucumber while getting in the way and leaving a chopping board, knife and excess cuttings all over the place because “I don’t know where you want the dishes” or whatever. It’s no help at all.
My mother in law is especially bad. She doesn’t know where things are, how to cook or how to clean, but always insists on “helping”.
I’m trying to cook here, not babysit a senior who doesn’t accept that her role as provider is over. Go play with the grand kids. That’s why we invited you as a guest.
