For the last month or so, I’ve prepared every single meal and snack I’ve consumed. For a whole month, if I ate something, it was because either I cooked it or re-heated it myself. There has been no delivery or take-out for me. I have never prepared so many of meals myself consecutively. I can’t remember the last time I had take-out. I wish I knew at the time it would be my last take-out meal for a while.
Well, as such, all this home cooking produces a lot of dirty dishes, utensils, and cookware. Unless it’s a pre-packaged, ready to eat snack (of which I have barely any of), if I need to eat, I’m getting something dirty that needs to be cleaned. I probably do my dishes by hand at least three to four times a day. I’ve thought about just leaving all the dishes until the end of the day and just putting everything into my dishwasher. I’ve resisted because some items can’t be put into a dishwasher, like a wok. It also kinda irks me if I see a big pile of dishes in the sink. This never used to bother me pre-pandemic, probably because I was out of my apartment a lot more. Since I basically spend all day inside now, I’m forced to see dirty dishes way more frequently. With all this time on my hands, it just makes sense to wash dishes after every meal or when needed.
As a consequence of all this dish washing, I burned through a ton of dish washing liquid in the last thirty days. In fact, on my last dangerous run to the grocery store, I had to buy a new bottle of that stuff. Lucky I did, because the current bottle I was using ran out today.
I can’t be alone in the increased amount of dirty dishes people produce during this quarantine. How is everyone else managing this?