Unfuck Your Habitat

• Doing the dishes is generally not difficult. It’s often tedious, and sometimes overwhelming, but it’s not hard. Suck it up and do them.
• If you’re facing a mountain of dishes, deal with it the UfYH way: 20 minutes at a time. Wash for 20 minutes, then take a 10-minute break to let things dry a little, come back, start your 20 minutes again by drying and putting away the clean dishes, and keep going.
• If you have a sink full of dishes, try (if you can reach the drain) stoppering up the sink and filling it with hot soapy water and letting it sit for an hour or so before you get going to loosen up some of the crud.
• If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, do not let your clean dishes languish in it while your dirty dishes pile up in the sink. Run it overnight? Put it away while your morning coffee is being brewed or your toast is toasting. Just like with laundry, “put it away” is a crucial, yet often overlooked, step for dishes.
• Before you start cooking, fill your sink with hot soapy water. As you go along, toss your prep dishes in there. When there’s some time (boiling time, or after stuff is in the oven), wash what you’ve used so far. Your goal is to have your prep dishes done by the time your food is finished cooking.
• Once your dish situation is under control, try to make it a goal to never let dirty dishes touch the bottom of the sink (and I don’t mean because there’s so much else in there!). Breakfast dishes, coffee cups, snack dishes, whatever: take the five seconds to wash them or put them in the dishwasher RIGHT THEN rather than using your sink as a waystation.

(via unfuckyourhabitat)

hellofieldsbean:

Ok so my kitchen is probably the worst area of my apartment.  After work I have a bad habit of just tossing the dishes in the sink or leaving them on the stove.  So I have set a goal for myself to have my entire apartment cleaned up by Thanksgiving.  This way I can have my first Thanksgiving at my place.

This is the before.  This also didn’t include the dishes that were in our spare bedroom (where we are eating right now since our kitchen table is covered).  

And the wonderful after.  It’s really dark since I only have one light above the sink right now.  It’s not 100% done, but my scrubby pad finally died on me.  The only things left are cookie sheets and some glassware. 

 

Also to keep this from happening again my husband and I came up with a new idea, ok well new for me.  Before every meal we will fill up one side of our sink with hot water and as we cook we toss the used dishes in the sink.  Then after dinner we wash, dry, and put away them before bed.  :)  Now to just finish the rest of the apartment!!!!!

• Doing the dishes is generally not difficult. It’s often tedious, and sometimes overwhelming, but it’s not hard. Suck it up and do them.
• If you’re facing a mountain of dishes, deal with it the UfYH way: 20 minutes at a time. Wash for 20 minutes, then take a 10-minute break to let things dry a little, come back, start your 20 minutes again by drying and putting away the clean dishes, and keep going.
• If you have a sink full of dishes, try (if you can reach the drain) stoppering up the sink and filling it with hot soapy water and letting it sit for an hour or so before you get going to loosen up some of the crud.
• If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, do not let your clean dishes languish in it while your dirty dishes pile up in the sink. Run it overnight? Put it away while your morning coffee is being brewed or your toast is toasting. Just like with laundry, “put it away” is a crucial, yet often overlooked, step for dishes.
• Before you start cooking, fill your sink with hot soapy water. As you go along, toss your prep dishes in there. When there’s some time (boiling time, or after stuff is in the oven), wash what you’ve used so far. Your goal is to have your prep dishes done by the time your food is finished cooking.
• Once your dish situation is under control, try to make it a goal to never let dirty dishes touch the bottom of the sink (and I don’t mean because there’s so much else in there!). Breakfast dishes, coffee cups, snack dishes, whatever: take the five seconds to wash them or put them in the dishwasher RIGHT THEN rather than using your sink as a waystation.

(via unfuckyourhabitat)

keepingitunfucked:

I always try to avoid the really nasty dishes, the ones that have stuff caked all over them. I think I’m convinced that if I do the rest of the dishes and leave them with soapy water in the sink then somehow they’ll be easier to clean later on. Usually it just creates a backlog in the sink where dishes get piled on top of the really gross one no one wants to clean, and it tends to be a game of chicken in the household to see who will cave and clean it first.

Today I decided to try something different:

I started with this (you can see the beginnings of the original method of “water in pan”):

Bacon grease, that ancient foe. But vinegar and baking soda combine to form a mighty weapon.

And lo, with minimal scrubbing to get the pre-loosened bits off, I was left with this:

Instead of a pile of dishes in my sink.

But I couldn’t put it back on a dirty, grease-covered stove…

So I cleaned that too. Took five minutes, instead of the ages it would take later when the grease had hardened onto the stovetop.

\o/

There is one problem. I need more vinegar, because clearly I must keep some below the sink in the kitchen in addition to a bottles in the laundry room and in each bathroom.

hellofieldsbean:

I am in a serious rut, I can’t find the motivation to do anything.  I have 2 days worth of dishes to do, my bed is still a mess, I am running out of clean socks, and I haven’t showered in 4 days!  Even UFYH isn’t working! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! *head desk*  How can I get rid of my rut??????? 

Start a load of laundry (make sure there are socks in there). Do one dish drainer full of dishes. Go make your bed. Put the laundry in the dryer. Go take a shower.

Now, please.