Quarantined Dishwasher

Warning: If you have never washed dishes, this may not be for you. If you are a cook, this material may be inflammable.

I always had a hunch that a dishwasher was trapped inside me. From an early age I had this revulsion, almost disdain for dirty dishes. I had heard stories of how I would wipe them clean. Over the years though, in today's parlance I had flattened that curve and become a respectable member of society.

That was until this quarantine.

My wife is a pretty good cook (She might quibble with my characterization of her cooking, and she may claim stronger superlatives...), but I have always been the better dishwasher. We have had this healthy debate about who's better at dishwashing. Healthy because after these fights, I mean debates, win or lose, the meal portions seemed to get rationed downward! 

But I digress...

At the start of the quarantine, a few of us were discussing what we were going to do with all that extra time - New Found Time we called it. I was advocating that we do things that we wouldn't have done in normal circumstances. "Let's do something, accomplish something." My wife chose to learn as many vedic verses as possible, a friend wanted to be the most devoted CNN watcher, another decided to set a record in the number of video calls he could make in a day, and so on.

Surrounded by such super-driven, ambitious folks, I announced that I wanted to be the Best Dishwasher in Santa Clara county!

Now, I must tell you I don't take dishwashing lightly. It is both a science and an art. I have a whole system to rinse the dirty dishes before loading them in the dishwasher (the machine thing!). When done right, it is just beautiful. Brilliant gleaming stainless dishes, clean transparent glasses, shining pots and pans, and spoons that you can see your face in. Every so often, I hold a clean shiny spoon up as a microphone, admire my face ( I am a bit vain:) and practice my acceptance speech as the No 1 Dishwasher in Santa Clara county!

The Only Metric that Matters: 

0 (zero) dirty dishes in the sink

As the stay at home progressed, I started noticing that this mission of mine was keeping me real busy.  There are just lots of dishes to be cleaned, and throughout the day. 

I decided to investigate.

1. I realized that lunch was a problem. In normal times, I took lunch in a container. All that had to be cleaned were 2 items - a container and a spoon. Now, since we are at home for lunch, there's a plate, maybe a cup for juice and multiple leftovers and their containers...You see there are 2-3x more dishes that need to be cleaned.

2. Lots of beverages, fluids, knives to cut fruits... Quarantine effect. Result more dishes.

3. Add to this, I am not sure if you have noticed this trend, but a growing number of pots and pans are hand wash only! What's up with that? What are these guys trying to do to people like me? Do they not know how much more effort it takes to hand wash and dry these hand wash vessels? The soaking, the scrubbing, the gentle rubbing. Not to talk about  the amount of water it takes. I have a good mind to start a petition to ban hand wash only utensils.

4. Transferring leftovers. This has always baffled me. After a meal, the leftovers are stored in a container. It tends to be a big container when it is a freshly cooked dish. Now, a day or two later, we enjoy part of the leftover at dinner. Sounds normal. But the leftovers - phase 2, are now downgraded to a smaller container. Why? To liberate the big container from the suboptimal use of volume and, get this, to save space in the refrigerator! Now I don't know about you, but I am quite comfortable with the idea of wasted space in the refrigerator, if I have one less container to clean!

5. Lastly, and I am not casting any aspersions or motives, but I have noticed that when a cook sees a high performing dishwasher, she tends to use more vessels in her cooking. It would have been just as easy to cook the same sumptuous meal with 50% fewer vessels!

Unfazed, like a true trooper, I have embraced the increased workload. I have a good shot at the 10,000-hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell espouses to achieve success at dishwashing. 

Bill Gates says washing dishes is his most productive time during the day. I can just see the richest man in the world, gently scrubbing while he thinks deep thoughts. It is said that in one of those moments, while staring out of his window that he came up with Windows!

All I want is to be the best Dishwasher in Santa Clara county.