Dish Crisis

The hardest part about living with others is putting up with their personalities and messiness. I’ve been collecting data for awhile on the dynamics of a college house or apartment.  And without a doubt the number one cause of tension within an apartment or house is a dish crisis.

For most of us, we’ve grown up with a dishwasher or at least an overextending Mom.  So dirty dishes were not a problem growing up, and we didn’t really learn how to wash them.  We just know how to put them in the dishwasher.  This creates a huge problem when you live in an apartment with no dishwasher.  So now, each person is required to wash their dishes after using them, which then inevitably leads to a dish crisis.

Time issue- Many college students eat in a hurry and save their dirty dishes for later for when they’ll have more time.  They fully intend to get around to cleaning them, but don’t have the time now.  Most times they’ll clean them later that day, but for certain people it might be a week before they have enough time (cough 3 minutes) to scrub down a pot.  Then there are others that just deny they used dishes.  This stems from high school where the overarching principle was deny everything.  For more serious accusations, it was deny and cry.  So dishes pile up when as they get put off until later.

Selfish issue- I believe everyone is innately selfish and we have to constantly think about it to not be selfish.  This adds to the dish crisis because very few roommates will do the others’ dishes.  Why should I clean up their stuff?  We’re too selfish and stubborn to clean up other people’s crap.

Laziness- Another reason that dishes pile up is that either we’re lazy or we just forget that it was our dish or one of our friends.

So all these factors combine and dirty dishes pile up in almost every apartment.  People say there isn’t enough time to make lunch and clean the dishes before, or they’re just lazy, and no one wants to clean other people’s crap.  So after a few weeks, people start putting passive aggressive notes up, pleading everyone to clean their dishes, because of course they always clean theirs.  These notes further the divide and the tension continues to build throughout the year.

The only way to solve a dish crisis is to have an apartment full of Samaritans that clean more dishes than they use.  They pick up each other’s slack.  There are hardly any of these apartments, so for a great conversation make sure to ask your friends how their dish crisis is going?