The Kitchen's Alive!!!!!

For the past three to four weeks now I have been the one to clean up the week's worth of dishes in the kitchen. I'm not complaining or anything, but rather making some interesting observations.

The Kitchen, being cleaned the weekend (or friday) before gets progressively worse until all of the glassware and silverware have all been completely used up and are found within every possible room and corner in the house. The kitchen table is full of the past week's mail and assorted lunches.... and the living room is where you go to collect the dirty dishes that have not migrated to the kitchen sink yet.

I start by sorting the dishes into piles of similar type on the kitchen table, we don't have a dish washer, but we do have two sinks and a drying rack. The silverware and utensils go into one of the sinks to soak. and I proceed to wash some and then dry some... and then wash some and then dry some... and then wash some and then dry some, and then wash and dry, and then wash and then dry... (repeat as necessary).

It is not as though no one in the house never does dishes, it's just that they a) do them poorly, or b) don't dry them, they just fill up the drying rack and call it done. No one bothers to collect dishes and take them to the sink or even clean off the table from time to time. But as the monks at Mt. Michael taught me, "drying is half the dishes." So in order to claim that I did the dishes I would need to wash and dry the dishes, multiple times even.... what a novel concept one might say... well, I do what I can.

During this weekly rite i grab the stereo out of the living room and put it atop the frig/microwave combo so that only the male population of the house can reach it. This ensures that I get to listen to whatever I want to listen to as I wash AND dry the dishes (i emphasize this so that it might be engrained into the subconsciousness of my flatmates). I also clean the stove-top, the counters, and the table, as well as sweep and mop the floors. It has become a very meditative and envigoring assignment.

For a while I thought that the house was just too lazy to get the dishes done, but now i realize that people are never home, and that when they are home they are sleeping, rushing to leave, or other. I am glad to live in such an affordable place which such wonderful people, but sometimes I wish that the house was cleaner more often.