Realizing that washing dishes causes my partner distress in a way it does not cause me distress low key changed my relationship. If it caused us both the same level of distress, I don't know what we would do!
A couple I know where they both had a deep hatred of dishwashing ended up hiring a housecleaning to stop the problem from building up too much but that’s definitely not an option for most people.
One of my partners gets very distressed with dishes but that’s been solved by her doing other chores plus having multiple people in our house helps. The labor is more spread out.
I…like washing dishes! But can we talk about toothpaste? I had a mentor tell me years ago that little things like squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube are the things that make a relationship. Dishes are like that. Like you point out, they’re constant, maybe more than any other household task. I suspect this tedium adds to the fraught. They’re a great task for mindfulness! If only we valued these kinds of care tasks. I think that would help, too. I appreciate this organized analysis of such a common relational challenge most of us take for granted.
Sometimes I like washing dishes. Working as a dishwasher was strangely meditative. There’s probably some connection with how dishwashers as a job are the lowest in the kitchen worker hierarchy.
My favorite toothpaste memory concerns my best friend in middle/high school. I swear that for five years straight she always had a toothpaste container that was almost entirely empty. We were always squeezing out the last bit. I still don’t understand how she managed that.
I hadn't realized it until now, but dish duty really is singularly unpopular among household chores - even with me, and I live alone! Thank you for this thought-provoking post.
Do you mean "Unfortunately, most research on division of household labor does *NOT separate out dishwashing from other tasks so the rest of my evidence is anecdotal."?
First, perhaps part of the problem is that people have different ideas of HOW to do dishes (even if it's about how to load a dishwasher), and different standards for how clean they want them, and how often they want them cleaned. The dishes themselves have no desires or needs of their own to "be cleaned", though people (including you in this post) will say that they do... Perhaps there is not as much variation in toilet cleaning, or laundering clothes?
Second, it's not petty, but it is pettier than it has to be if there are too many people involved, and if they don't all love each other romantically or as kin (parent-child, and brethren), so they can cut each other a lot of slack.
Third, some people want to shame others for the way they do (or don't do) dishes (or other household chores, but as you mentioned, they get a more frequent chance to shame with dishes than other household chores).
Fourth, some people have nothing better to do with their time than household chores, and think everyone else should be like them. Then they proceed to feel disrespected when other people point out that they DO have better things to do. Perhaps the problem is self-disrespect?
Yes, I did mean that and just edited it. Thanks for pointing that out.
To your first point, I agree there are different standards people have for dishes in ways that does not apply to other tasks like toilet cleaning although I do think it applies to laundry (separating out colors, how to fold or standards on leaving dirty clothes out). Most of the different standards with dishes that I’ve seen concern how willing people are to have dirty dishes in the sink.
I did anthropomorphize dishes a bit. The dishes have no needs but I do think that every house has a need to handle dishes in some way, which can include minimizing the number of dishes used. I also don’t think the solution to household chores is to always default to the person with the strictest standards.
Yeah, the anthropomorphizations sometimes are manipulative: instead of admitting what the person's needs are (say x), they make it more universal by saying "the dishes need x". Academics do this too, with the passive voice... I suppose you can say "every house needs x" if by this you mean "at least one person in the house needs x".
Needs are not always what they seem, when we bring them down to people's needs instead of imaginary objective needs. It could be needing to feel appreciated for one's contributions, to shame someone into submission because one needs to feel in control or because one feels aggressive towards them for some reason, or because one wants to feel safe that social norms are being followed and the dishes are an easy test case, or because one wants/needs to expand the scope of household chores indefinitely (because one doesn't have anything else that nourishes them to do), etc.
I do agree to a certain extent. There are many cases where people word things to make it sound like there is immutable law about what needs to be done. In many cases, it's better for people to make clear what it is that they want (reminded of NVC).
My main issue with suggesting therapy for the people getting annoyed is that, at least in my experience, the problem is much more common that people are leaving their own dishes for others to clean and people are getting annoyed because they are continuously cleaning for other people. There are some standards to this that can be reasonably assumed.
And the phenomenon of free riding exists in every group. But it's not always clear who is doing it. For example, the people with high standards could also free ride on the people with low standards by imposing the cost of labor that the lower standards people would not incur were the higher standard people not there. It might be better not to live with people with highly different standards. And this goes way beyond dishwashing. Small families that can agree on a standard, interacting in non-domestic ways (though other forms of trade, and through shared ideological views) would be much better, leading to much less unnecessary conflict
When needs are see this way, we might see the solution as trying to do some therapy with the people who are getting annoyed, to tease out what their real needs are, instead of either defaulting to the strictest needs person, or to the roaches...
I got no problems busting suds as a portal to a communal happiness in my household…
Realizing that washing dishes causes my partner distress in a way it does not cause me distress low key changed my relationship. If it caused us both the same level of distress, I don't know what we would do!
A couple I know where they both had a deep hatred of dishwashing ended up hiring a housecleaning to stop the problem from building up too much but that’s definitely not an option for most people.
One of my partners gets very distressed with dishes but that’s been solved by her doing other chores plus having multiple people in our house helps. The labor is more spread out.
I…like washing dishes! But can we talk about toothpaste? I had a mentor tell me years ago that little things like squeezing the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube are the things that make a relationship. Dishes are like that. Like you point out, they’re constant, maybe more than any other household task. I suspect this tedium adds to the fraught. They’re a great task for mindfulness! If only we valued these kinds of care tasks. I think that would help, too. I appreciate this organized analysis of such a common relational challenge most of us take for granted.
Sometimes I like washing dishes. Working as a dishwasher was strangely meditative. There’s probably some connection with how dishwashers as a job are the lowest in the kitchen worker hierarchy.
My favorite toothpaste memory concerns my best friend in middle/high school. I swear that for five years straight she always had a toothpaste container that was almost entirely empty. We were always squeezing out the last bit. I still don’t understand how she managed that.
I hadn't realized it until now, but dish duty really is singularly unpopular among household chores - even with me, and I live alone! Thank you for this thought-provoking post.
Do you mean "Unfortunately, most research on division of household labor does *NOT separate out dishwashing from other tasks so the rest of my evidence is anecdotal."?
First, perhaps part of the problem is that people have different ideas of HOW to do dishes (even if it's about how to load a dishwasher), and different standards for how clean they want them, and how often they want them cleaned. The dishes themselves have no desires or needs of their own to "be cleaned", though people (including you in this post) will say that they do... Perhaps there is not as much variation in toilet cleaning, or laundering clothes?
Second, it's not petty, but it is pettier than it has to be if there are too many people involved, and if they don't all love each other romantically or as kin (parent-child, and brethren), so they can cut each other a lot of slack.
Third, some people want to shame others for the way they do (or don't do) dishes (or other household chores, but as you mentioned, they get a more frequent chance to shame with dishes than other household chores).
Fourth, some people have nothing better to do with their time than household chores, and think everyone else should be like them. Then they proceed to feel disrespected when other people point out that they DO have better things to do. Perhaps the problem is self-disrespect?
Yes, I did mean that and just edited it. Thanks for pointing that out.
To your first point, I agree there are different standards people have for dishes in ways that does not apply to other tasks like toilet cleaning although I do think it applies to laundry (separating out colors, how to fold or standards on leaving dirty clothes out). Most of the different standards with dishes that I’ve seen concern how willing people are to have dirty dishes in the sink.
I did anthropomorphize dishes a bit. The dishes have no needs but I do think that every house has a need to handle dishes in some way, which can include minimizing the number of dishes used. I also don’t think the solution to household chores is to always default to the person with the strictest standards.
Yeah, the anthropomorphizations sometimes are manipulative: instead of admitting what the person's needs are (say x), they make it more universal by saying "the dishes need x". Academics do this too, with the passive voice... I suppose you can say "every house needs x" if by this you mean "at least one person in the house needs x".
Needs are not always what they seem, when we bring them down to people's needs instead of imaginary objective needs. It could be needing to feel appreciated for one's contributions, to shame someone into submission because one needs to feel in control or because one feels aggressive towards them for some reason, or because one wants to feel safe that social norms are being followed and the dishes are an easy test case, or because one wants/needs to expand the scope of household chores indefinitely (because one doesn't have anything else that nourishes them to do), etc.
I do agree to a certain extent. There are many cases where people word things to make it sound like there is immutable law about what needs to be done. In many cases, it's better for people to make clear what it is that they want (reminded of NVC).
My main issue with suggesting therapy for the people getting annoyed is that, at least in my experience, the problem is much more common that people are leaving their own dishes for others to clean and people are getting annoyed because they are continuously cleaning for other people. There are some standards to this that can be reasonably assumed.
Yes, NVC is a good communication tech.
And the phenomenon of free riding exists in every group. But it's not always clear who is doing it. For example, the people with high standards could also free ride on the people with low standards by imposing the cost of labor that the lower standards people would not incur were the higher standard people not there. It might be better not to live with people with highly different standards. And this goes way beyond dishwashing. Small families that can agree on a standard, interacting in non-domestic ways (though other forms of trade, and through shared ideological views) would be much better, leading to much less unnecessary conflict
When needs are see this way, we might see the solution as trying to do some therapy with the people who are getting annoyed, to tease out what their real needs are, instead of either defaulting to the strictest needs person, or to the roaches...