Doing Dishes

I want to rethink how I think about doing dishes.

The way we think about things sometimes gives us healthy unreachable standards. They set a goal for us to stretch for time and time again, driving us every day to achieve and grow. Other times, unreachable goals might be proof that the standard is set in the wrong place.

I’m beginning to think that the way I view dishes isn’t a high standard, but a wrong standard. I cook 90% of what we eat, and I cook it from scratch. This doesn’t mean I don’t use any prepared food, but that I try to avoid processed food. This doesn’t mean I don’t use any shortcuts, but I do try to be cautious with them because they often lead to lazy thinking and lazy standards. We also eat almost all our meals at home. We eat out maybe once a week unless things are crazy or I have a flare-up. That’s 27 meals (3 meals and 1 snack per day), dessert, and drinks of various kinds a week.

These two things—cooking from scratch and rarely eating out—means there are always dishes. Always. Things either just got cooked, are about to get cooked, or are actively cooking. On top of that, I enjoy using wooden utensils, cast iron, and pretty things that don’t necessarily handle dishwashers well, so I have an abundance of dishes to hand wash (my choice) and our dishwasher is old.

On top of that even, I’m not an evening dish doer. By dinner time, I’m done. And since our kitchen isn’t the main living area, it doesn’t bother me or my husband. We can’t see the messy kitchen.

All of this is my setting, some difficulties by choice and some by providence.

My standard/goal has been to Get the Dishes Done and have them Stay Done.

I accomplish this goal for about 3 seconds a day.

As soon as breakfast’s dishes (and last night’s) are done, it’s time to prep dinner and make lunch. Every day. I seem to get the dishes done just before starting the next cooking project. Talk about constantly being frustrated in my kitchen. Like a rat in a wheel, I keep judging my day’s level of accomplishment by dishes done and staying done, and so every day feels like a failure. I’m pretty sure I’ve set up an unrealistic, unfair standard for a life that I don’t lead.

How should I think about dishes?

First, I need to eliminate the idea of ‘done’ as a measurement of my success. The dishes will never be done. As long as the Lord gives me to walk this earth the dishes will always need to be washed, so I need to stop thinking “get the dishes done.” It’s like trying to tell an oak tree to stop growing. It’s only gonna stop growing when it’s dead.

Dishes always need washing.

Dishes aren’t done.

Maybe Do Dishes, instead of Done Dishes.

Like, keep up with dishes.

What I want is to maintain control of the dishes so that they can continue to serve my hearth and home and health safety is maintained.

Control the Dishes.

This implies that they’re in a state of processing that I’m the mistress over. I’m the mistress, not the dishes. I decide when it's time to do them and when it isn’t. They’re my maidservant. My tools.

And they’re always there.

I need to stop expecting to get the dishes to some magical level of sustained completeness. That’s impossible. Food will be eaten. I need to expect to maintain control and cleanliness in the home by washing dishes throughout the day. The sink is more of a conveyor belt, constantly going, than a piece of art, produced and finished. (Though there is an art to doing dishes.)

This helps. Seeing dishes rightly helps me to correctly judge when I’m doing well and when I’m not, while measuring with a fair standard.

The interesting part is, as I try to correct my thinking on dishes, I’m struck with just how much of our home management is the management of tasks never really finished. The laundry needs doing, the house needs cleaning, and the garden needs weeding. Some of these have bigger rest points between the doing, but how long does a bathroom go before being dirty again and how many loads of wash do we run every day?

It’s important to acknowledge the fact that much of our work is in the realm of always doing. Trying to keep the house in a state of perfectly clean, of completeness, dishes done, laundry done, cooking done, will make us insane because it won’t ever happen. It’s like being in a fight with a hurricane armed with a pool noodle. We’re fighting the wrong fight with the wrong tools. We need to reset our goals, expectations, and management styles.

My other thought is that this may be why we women are so prone to not stopping and resting, especially on Sunday, and why we can so easily become bitter at our families. We’re trapped in a lie that at some point there will be no dishes, no dirty clothes, no cleaning, and then we can sit back, put our feet up, and say, “I’m done.”

Ladies, that’s never going to happen. We can work ourselves out of the job of raising our children, and we should, but we aren’t going to ever have a moment where we’ve worked ourselves out of our job in our homes. We must take control of our thinking so we can say, “That’s enough” and “I’m content,” then stop and rest. Not as an excuse for laziness, but a trusting the day to the Lord with a correct understanding of the type of work we do.

There will always be dishes. Always.

The goal can’t be “have them done.” The goal should be: under control and maintain safety. ‘Under control’ will look different in each home. If you’re training young children, your ‘under control’ might look wetter than my ‘under control’…though not necessarily. If you have a big family or diet restrictions, your ‘under control’ will appear vastly different than a small family with no restrictions. If you have health limitations or an outside-the-home job, your ‘under control’ will also look different.

My main desire is to help us stop punishing ourselves with unrealistic and even untrue expectations. If we wait to rest until the work is done, we’ll never rest. Incorrect standards put us in danger of having frantic homes, bitterness towards our families, and not honoring the Lord’s Day.

Lofty goals and expectations are good for us. It’s important to be diligent and to stretch ourselves. But it’s also important to correctly judge the type of work we’re called to. Our domestic arts are very cyclical and continuous. They don’t stop because we’re in the business of tending souls through ordinary things like cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

The very nature of many domestic arts is the fact that they’re continuous, unlike a painting, a photograph, or a novel. The artistry practiced in a home carries on through life.

I, personally, have two reactions to this cycle. One is rejoicing. When I understand a thing correctly, I can learn to love it properly. It’s a moment of “Oh, there you are!” Properly armed, I can enjoy my labor because I’ve learned to set a correct standard.

The other is weariness. There is a worn feeling that comes with realizing I’ll never, in this life, be done with the dishes, just like I’ll never be out of the fight with sin. This points me back to Christ. It is finished! Christ sat down! Christ promised rest! Oh, glorious thought! Rest!

Who would have thought that doing dishes could produce praise and longing? Such is the inner life of the believer and the housewife. Ladies, don’t be afraid to reset your standards if something just doesn’t seem to be working. Our goal is to make a pleasant home, and sometimes that means the dishes aren’t done, the dishes are doing.