DIRECTIONS FOR HAND WASHING DISHES

The following directions were part of the proper training of a young girl in my time.

• Feed leftovers to the dog or put them in containers and store in the refrigerator.  
• Clear the dishes from the table and stack them beside the sink.
• Run hot water in the left hand sink or dish pan and add dish soap.
• Fill the right hand sink with very hot water or fill another dish pan.
• Place Rubbermaid rack and mat on the right hand counter.
• Start washing glassware first in hot soapy water.
• Rinse in the hot rinse water and place in the rack.  (very hot rinse water will help them dry faster)
• Continue same process in this order.  Silverware, dishes and bowls, serving pieces and finally the pots.
• Clean the countertops, stove and sink.  Rinse out the dish “rag” and hang it in its proper place to dry.
• All dishes, pots, pans and silverware are returned to their proper place.

I stood on a stool and watched my mother feeling like such a big girl and later I accepted the responsibility.  I thought I was pretty good at it and then it was time for me to teach my little brother.  As happens with brothers and sisters, it developed into a race which was good because we got them done quickly.  Maybe bad because in the rush some things might not have gotten as clean as they should be and that’s were the “dish dryer code” kicked in. 

• If it’s been in the hot soapy water and the rinse water then it is the dryer’s responsibility to be sure whatever is being dried is clean.

When I say that things got competitive between my brother and me, well, it got down right savage.  Mostly I washed and he dried and in my mind, I had to beat my brother and at all costs.  We cleared the table together, put away (in one form or another) the leftovers and prepared the water, then the race was on.  I found that if I washed the dishes in the manner taught to me my brother and I would complete the job at just about the same time and that was not good enough for me so I devised a new order to dish washing.  I washed the glasses the dishes and the pots and pans and THEN I washed the silverware.  All these utensils had to be washed and dried individually and there was the answer.  After everything else was washed, I would dump all the silverware in my hot soapy water and while I was washing each one and saving them all together, I would glance around the kitchen to be sure I wasn’t missing something.  When all the silverware was washed and I had found nothing else to be washed, I lifted up all the utensils and dumped them in my brothers hot rinse water.  He would groan every time and grab those forks, knives and spoons out of the hot water and put them in the rack and start drying them just as fast as he could.  I would be racing around the kitchen wiping countertops while the water drained from my sink and my brother was drying and putting the silverware away as fast as he could.  He knew I had to scour the sink and rinse out the “dish rag” but he had to drain his sink and fold his towel, so we raced seeing which one of us would win.  

Flopping all the silverware into the rinse water at the end was a real winner for me and most of the time I beat him.  I loved my little brother and really wasn’t trying to be mean to him and I knew he loved me and tried his level best to be done first but that little race got us through the task of dishwashing for several years.  My brother always got the last word though.  I didn’t know when he would do it in the process but when he lost he always pinched the back of my upper arm.  It always hurt, he always smiled as he walked away and I was hollering “Mom, he pinched me again” and mom always said, “Larry” with whatever voice inflection she thought was appropriate.

My brother and his wife visited this summer and it was so good to spend time together.  We sat down to dinner and just talked about everything we could think of and at the end, I started putting things away and getting ready to load the dishwasher.  My brother walked over and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Want me to help do dishes?”  My default answer always seems to be “No” when asked this, “I’ll take care of it in a jiffy”.  As I was putting the last dish away, I remembered this story.  I knew that my subtle brother had remembered too.  We could have relived the experience once again but for me and my default “No”.  I  wish I had said “Yes”, I’ll bet there would have been a good hard pinch at the end. 

 

 

 

 

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