Dirty Dishes and Messy Cleaning Efforts

 (Alternative Title: Please Don’t Tell My Mother about This)

I've never been the overly neat and tidy type. Much to the dismay of my mother, I inherited my father’s organizational tendencies, which can be classified into three categories: stacks, more stacks, and a nebulous pile. Being the creative, non-linear thinker that I am, tidiness forever seems to put a kink in the process of art. No one gets inspiration from a neat desk. A messy desk always seems to reflect the state of my mind—a jumble of ideas, vaguely connected on a horizontal landscape. One simply has to reach in, grab an idea, and then head off down the road of possibilities. It’s people like me who dress up like Lady Macbeth, or bring live fish to class, or take students out in the parking lot to write poetry with chalk. Messy thinking leads to messy education—and the best education is always a glorious mess of the old and the new, the novel and the antique, the classroom and the universe beyond. True learning is never tidy.

However, despite my philosophical defenses of disorganization, there still remains the issue of the practical. Let’s face it—Robert Herrick may have written a brilliant little poem titled “Delight in Disorder,” but it’s unlikely that his mother appreciated the sentiment, especially when it came to cleaning his room (although, admittedly, the poem isn't aimed at room-cleaning. It’s romantic. But I still don’t think his mother liked it).

Last night I came face-to-face with the practical side of disorder. Hot water in Greece works differently than in the States (that was phrased badly—I don’t mean to say that it doesn't boil at a hundred degrees. It simply is not so readily available here). I do not have hot water in the kitchen. The only liquid that flows from the tap is ice cold. About a month or so ago I washed a stack (several stacks, actually) of dishes. I noticed afterwards that they all retained a kind of scummy residue, even though I had washed them thoroughly with soap. The cold water simply wasn't doing the trick. So the next time I washed dishes, I boiled pots of water so that I had both hot soapy water and boiling pure water for sterilization. It worked well. No scum remained.

Unfortunately, this put me in something of a predicament. When one lives alone, one doesn't use that many dishes each day. It’s a waste of energy to boil pots of water just to wash a bowl, a plate, a cup, and a few sundry pieces of silverware. To boil that much water to wash so few dishes is like running a load of laundry that contains only one outfit.

So I decided that I would simply let the dishes accumulate until I had enough to merit a full-on boiling-of-the-water event. At least that’s what I told myself. In reality, it was more likely an excuse to be lazy. Either way, this time I didn't wash the dishes until I had used every bowl, nearly every cup, and almost all the silverware. The process of building up to the event took about two weeks. It was two weeks of looking at the growing collection of dirty dishes on the counter and thinking things like, “This looks bad. Really bad. I hope I don’t die before I get to washing these because if other people see this, they probably won’t come to my funeral.”

Finally, last night, I decided that I actually would approach my Mount Everest of dishes. It wasn't that I hadn't intended to do it before. Other things just always took precedent: like…um…cleaning the rest of the apartment (why do we always leave the dirtiest room to last?).  But now I was truly out of clean dishes, and it was going to get ugly if I didn't wash something.

Thus, I began with soaking all the cups. Here is a picture.

Then I put up four pots of water to boil. Here is another picture.

Then came the delicate business of washing dishes in boiling water without losing too many fingers. It’s tricky. Rubber gloves only protect so much. One learns to rotated dishes through the water, holding a piece of them above the surface. Other moments, one must simply plunge in and grab a handful of spoons. There are sacrifices to be made for clean dishes.

The nice element of the process is that it’s a really wonderful way to warm up on a chilly November night. It’s also a nice way to get a facial.

It’s also a nice way to get water all over the floor.

When I was in the midst of cleaning, it occurred to me that I was living the life of a stereotypical bachelor. I’m sure I’m not the first one who’s come up with the whole “Save Energy: Don’t Wash Dishes Until You've Used Them All” slogan. I spent the entirety of the enterprise vacillating between amusement and embarrassment.

As I headed to bed last night, I found myself thinking, “Surely—surely—there is a better way to do this. It really is a waste to boil water for a few dishes. But does the kitchen have to degenerate into a pigsty every week? Am I doomed to two years dreading possible posthumous embarrassment over a grand cadre of dirty cups? There must be a better way!”

This morning, in a rare moment of brilliance, I came up with a solution. I would thoroughly rinse the dishes after I used them and place them in the dish drain. When that filled, I would go through the boiling water routine. Anyone who came over to the apartment would not suspect that the dishes in the dish drain were simply rinsed and not actually clean. My fears of discovery could be forever relieved.

Why I didn't think of that in the first place, I’ll never know. Perhaps if I kept my brain in better order, it would take a little less mental scrounging around next time. Sometimes in my search for the novel solution, I miss the obvious. Maybe those tidy people know what they’re doing after all...