Kate: Or you could go the minimalist route. I had a friend in university who lived in a very small basement apartment, and I don't recall him having a whole lot of furniture. We really didn't socialize there, which was also part of his plan, but he one of every serving or eating piece. He had one fork, one spoon, one knife, one cup, one bowl, one plate. His theory was if he didn't have too many dishes, he could never have too many dirty dishes. He was forcing himself to use and clean in the same effort, so that he would never come home to a disaster that he would only be able to deal with by moving out, or burning it to the ground. So, you know, you could just go and get a whole lot of disposable chopsticks. Those are also good. Forget cutlery, disposable chopsticks. Don't need a knife, just chew it off. You know, one spoon and a whole bunch of disposable chopsticks, you could be fine. Just get a good spatula, Rubbermaid spatula.
Jill: That sounds like a very guy mentality. I can only see a male doing something like that. My mom, also my mom's husband, has-he did something similar to that. He would-I'm trying to think now, just what it was exactly that he did-but it was just so ridiculous. He would-oh, yes, I recall now. He didn't wash dishes, just didn't wash dishes. So he would just use the same dishes. Wipe them off a little bit, and just use the same dishes, and then once they got a little too disgusting, he would throw them out and get other ones. That is how lazy he was. Fortunately I'm not like that, and I would find that quite disgusting. I find for one person, the amount of dishes you have, it really only takes a few minutes to do them, so it's not that big of a deal. So that should be all right. I do dishes at home already now, for three people, so that's fine. Kate: I haven't heard of that approach, actually. I've heard of, you know, paper plates, or Styrofoam plates which you would expect to throw out, but yeah, that's a bit much. That sounds unsafe. Did he have a dog, maybe let the dog lick them off or something? That sounds like a better- Jill: A roommate! Kate: A roommate. I don't think I'd want my roommate to lick off the plates. Now, that's not considered clean. I must admit that I was lucky enough to live with a dishwasher, the machinery, but as a single person, it would take me a week and a half to fill the dishwasher. I would use every single plate in the house, and be forcing myself at the end, so it wasn't that practical. Now there are two of us, my husband, and he eats a lot, and he uses a lot of plates. It takes us probably four or five days to fill up the dishwasher. You know, exciting. It's a major day when the dishwasher goes on. Jill: It's a big event. Kate: It's a big event, yeah. And my husband is very helpful; he has actually put on the dishwasher twice in our relationship. Of course, both those times, I had already put it on, it had been through a full cycle, and it was a full dishwasher. Yes, it was a full dishwasher, but it was full of clean plates.
Jill: You know, it's a lot easier just to turn the dishwasher on and pretend like you didn't know they were clean than it is to actually have to unload the whole dishwasher, so he's got a good strategy going on there, I think. You know, he's pretty smart! Kate: He may be smarter than I give him credit for, but I think those were actually honest mistakes, because that's how he is. He really thought he was doing such a good deed, and he was. I give him credit for that, but he could have looked. He only looked to the level that the dishwasher was full. He registered that, and he found the soap, he put the soap-I think-in the right place. He turned the dishwasher on in some form, and he walked away, you know, feeling very proud of himself. And it was really funny the first time, but it was so much funnier the second time! And then I basically banned him from touching the dishwasher mechanism. So, you know, maybe you're right. Maybe that was his plan all along. Well, he's the cooker and I'm the cleaner, so it works out. The dishwasher should be my area anyway, since that's cleaning up. He makes the food and the mess, usually, and I clean up. And we both eat, so that works okay.
