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| Our kitchen counter (fridge on the right, stove on the left) |
Suggestion time! What would you do? Or even better, what do you do?
For as long as I can remember, my home has had a medium-sized, single-bowl sink, and no (usable) dishwasher. In our current apartment, we also have very limited counter space.
Now, I've always washed dishes by running hot water while I individually scraped, soaped and rinsed each item. I generally balk at the filling the sink method because of the ickiness of the water after a while. But I know my method uses a ridiculous amount of water. There's got to be a more reasonable way.
My instinct is to try and figure out a good way to soak the dishes in soapy water, scrub them individually and lay them somewhere else, and then rinse them with running water in batches. But the question still remains, where is this hypothetical "somewhere else"? And to be honest, as we cook a lot, and use the sink for draining the steamer and pasta pots, washing food, washing our hands, and everything else as well, by the time we're ready to clean up, the sink is already so full of stuff, I'm not too excited about trying to get the plug in the drain anyway.
So my question to you all is, in our current space, how can we set up our kitchen and our dish-washing habits to be as sustainable as possible? Preferably without rendering the task more likely to be studiously avoided than it is now.
I've included more photos below: the space as we have it set up now, the sink with a cereal bowl to show size, and the bare counter for maximum imagination potential!
Ideas?
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| The dish rack takes up most of the counter. Many of our dishes are big and heavy, so I'm unsure how practical a smaller one would be, but it could definitely help improve spacing. |
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| A cereal bowl in the sink, to show the size. |
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| Pondering the possibilities! |
Hmmm, our drainboard has a different orientation to yours (long edge to the sink rather than along the counter) which would widen the space on the other side of the drain board. That could possibly hold a plastic basin for rinse water, or provide space to keep the unwashed dishes?
ReplyDeleteI scrape all plates, pots, etc. (if there's anything to scrape) into the garbage, and if I'm not doing the dishes right away, rinse them quickly before stacking beside the sink (this all but eliminates the grungy water -- more on that in a moment).
Now, I have the benefit of space on both sides of my sink -- but at our house in Ontario the drain board lived *under* the sink, and only came out while needed for dishes. So, if you could make room for the db to live on edge under the sink, you could stack your scraped/quick-rinsed dishes to the right where it currently resides.
I also have the benefit here of a double sink, but I have lived in places with a single one.
When it comes to the actual washing, I hate grimy/oily water as much as you do. My solution is to not "fill" the sink, but to start with only about 5-7 cm of water in the sink, and to move things either one at a time or in small groups into the water, and thence to the db in a left to right fashion. If/when the water gets gross, I don't feel bad about re-filling the sink, because I only started with a fraction of what most people seem to use. With a single basin sink, you then run the water intermittently to rinse -- a low stream, and turn it off in between. At worst your sink might be full by the time you are done.
So, if you collect your de-gouped dishes to the right of the sink, then when it's time to wash you would transfer them temporarily to the stove top, get out the drain board, and proceed to wash.
Let me know how things go!
I saw some online that were oriented that way, some of which were about half the width, others were just a bit smaller than ours. Might look into one.
ReplyDeleteGotta be careful though. I am working on conquering a nasty tendency to experiment with ways of running our household more efficiently, without actually consulting my partner in crime before setting them up. It's not that I don't think he has a say, nor that he's unwilling to test ideas with me. It's just when I get it in my mind to experiment, my brain runs off at the mouth and I have to work fast to keep up. I zone out and forget everything until I've put my idea in motion, and then I kind of go "uhhhh... right, now to adapt!" The problem is, he didn't even know there was going to be anything to adapt to!
Will have to discuss the possibilities -- all of which so far seem to favour acquiring some separate something to put dishes into at some point in the process (i.e. a wash basin) so as to have the sink full of water for some other point in the process.