Run the dishwasher every night

0:03Speaker 1:Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to run the dishwasher every night. Doing so will keep dishes from piling up, and we'll make your kitchen routines far more orderly. So you may think this is a weird tip coming from me, since I often questioned and whether various household chores truly need to be done, or at least whether they need to be done with the frequency that Martha Stewart might recommend. I rarely make my bed. I don't require my kids to make their beds either. I don't fold my gym clothes or pajamas, because why would I. They don't wrinkle, and it wouldn't particularly matter if they did. But I am pretty much a fundamentalist when it comes to running the dishwasher every night and unloading it first thing every morning. You should do this if you have a big household like mine, and you should also do this if yours is a much smaller household. Here's why it pays to run the dishwasher every night, even if it is not completely jammed full.

1:22Speaker 1:If you start every day with an empty dishwasher. There is no reason for dirty dishes to end up in the sink or on the counter. Every dish can go straight into the dishwasher. When the dishwasher is always available for dirty dishes, you can set a clear expectation that everyone puts their dirty dishes into the dishwasher immediately after meals, after snacks, whatever. When everyone knows exactly what happens with dishes, you will avoid dish pile ups because the dishes will go into the dishwasher throughout the day. There won't be a gross backlog after dinner, because the worst situation is if you have a full, dirty dishwasher and dishes stacked up, then you have to leave all the dirty dishes sitting there while the dishwasher runs. Then you have to empty in it, and then you have to fill it again.

2:15Speaker 1:Someone will have to come back into the kitchen hours later to deal with it, or you start the morning with a pile of dirty dishes from the night before, and this probably does not improve anyone's morning mood. Having a clear dishwasher routine also lets you avoid dish dilemmas. You will never ask yourself, should we run the dishwasher tonight or after breakfast tomorrow. The answer is to run it tonight. You start the day with clean dishes, which can then be put away, and you free up bandwidth for contemplating far more interesting questions. I think there are only a few exceptions to this rule of running the dishwasher every night, and these are rare. The first exception is if your household fills up the dishwasher well before the end of the day. If that is the case, then you should run it as soon as it is full, perhaps right after lunch, and then empty it as soon as the cycle is done. Then you can run it before bedtime, just as a one time a day household would, and empty it again in the morning. The other exception is that if you are a household of say one person, and you can consistently fit two days of dishes into

3:29Speaker 1:the dishwasher, then I suppose it is okay to run the dishwasher every other night. But if even once or twice a week or so you can't fit all of the second day's dishes into the dishwasher, then it's time to start running it nightly. This will save you any pile ups of dirty dishes. If you are doubtful that running the dishwasher every night is going to work for you. Maybe just try it for a couple of weeks. If it doesn't work, you can return to whatever you are doing.

4:00Speaker 1:But if it does work, you might find that dishes feel far more doable. Are there any household routines you stand by like I stand by running the dishwasher every night? You can let me know about them at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. You can also let me know if you disagree with me on running the dishwasher every night. I'd love to hear why and what you do instead. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the moost of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.

4:54Speaker 1:Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.