Dude, for real. Folks: do not take your dishwasher for granted!

This so much. Don't have a dishwasher currently and I spend upwards of 20 minutes a day in front of the sink. Makes my shoulders hurt hunching over like that all the time

Getting a dishwasher was one of the things that has improved my quality of life the most. Even a crappy, cheapo dishwasher like mine will make a big difference.

Yeah, in my student single flat, I didn't had a dishwasher for quite some time.

Couldn't keep up in any way, although this shit kitchen wasn't even up to really cook something big, but hand washing every little thing, really put me off cooking for quite some time.

I think, I re-used the same set of plate and knife for years, just because I didn't want to use up more dishes, that I need to wash...

When you start to level up in life, invest in a mid-tier or above dishwasher. Man that thing has changed my life. We had a dishwasher but it started leaking and caused water damage on the floor. That was a whole headache. Went to buy a new one once the floor was fixed, turns out I had a very basic, entry level dishwasher. It wasn't terrible (until it leaked) but upgrading to a better one, oooh baby, this thing cleans and dries like a dream! Ah such a midlife thrill acquiring an effective dishwasher.

I read this while procrastinating about cleaning the kitchen

Naturally

I go commando because I just have no underwear while wearing two different socks. They will find me keeled over like this eating in a restaurant. Kitchen dirty of course.

I also don't care.

This was very frustrating for me when I went through it. I was in a growing phase, trying to get my life on tracks, and I HATED that I could never have all my clothes I love to wear washed while still being able to wear them. Obvious, I know. But it really wasn’t something I had encountered before, because I never really cared about keeping things tidy.

It’s funny that once you decide you want things tidy, you realize they never truly will be.

You can clean up all the cans, but you will crack another.

You can do all the laundry, you gotta wear it

You can clean the plates, still gotta eat off of them

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!

It's one of the reasons I hate having one person cook and the other clean

the incentives are misaligned, and it just breeds bad habits and reckless cooking IMHO. If you do both cooking and cleaning, you'll hopefully learn to clean as you go.

Yeah you gotta do it straight away or very soon after. I try to wash dishes as we go but anything left, if we're watching TV over dinner or whatever, I pause that after we eat and go wash the remaining dishes. Otherwise they aren't going to get done

Mine isn't usually spotless because when it's time to eat it's time to eat, but I always clean as I go. Everything I do in the kitchen starts with a piping hot sink of soapy water.

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.

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.

The call is coming from in the house.

You got hard water?

That was my thought. If you take your take out to the couch directly you don’t need to clean the kitchen. #life hack

Get one of those car window cleaners, The kind they use at the gas station with the wiper blade on one side and the scrubby sponge on the back. Use it in your shower every time after you shower. Scrubby side first wiper side second. It literally takes 30 seconds to scrub down everything and while it's never completely clean it never gets groady.

Treat your grout with bleach. Spray the wall wipe the bleach off the tile itself The grout will absorb it a little bit and it'll keep mold from forming.

If you have a glass shower door you can treat it with rainx the same way you would do your windshield. It's not get any appreciable muck on it for weeks. It is unfortunately a fair amount of work to apply the Windex properly.

Get stainless steel cleaner to clean stainless steel. It really makes a difference.

The oxalic acid in Bar Keeper's Friend will remove tarnish from copper with zero effort. It can also remove burned on food to an extent.

If your range hood is covered in grease and dust, pour olive oil all over a paper towel and use that to wipe off you hood first. Then use a soapy rag to clean off the oil.

Slightly damp magic erasers will remove almost anything from painted drywall. You can do the same spot about four or five times usually before it needs to be repainted.

Don't use a steam mop on luxury vinyl plank. Only use a spray mop and neutral pH cleaners specifically designed for flooring. Definitely not fabuloso.

Remove the baskets from your dishwasher once in a while and scrub the insides down with the magic eraser.

Clean your dishwasher filter every time you run it, or be prepared to replace the pump every other year.

Take your shower heads off and soak them in CLR if they start spraying water in strange directions.

Have kids and an incontinent cat, and despair.