Cooking 1X a Week ~ The Dirty Dishes Dilemma

While organizing my freezer, I found ten meals ready to heat and eat. SCORE! It was like finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. So, I thought about cooking just for this post and then I thought… NOPE. Don’t get me wrong. I love you guys and all, but if you could get away without cooking, wouldn’t you?

That’s what I thought.

So, I wanted to spend a little more time today talking about the concern I have heard the most since last week’s post.

The Dirty Dishes

Any time you cook, you are going to have dishes but there are ways to conquer Mt. Dishmore. Whether you are cooking once a night , once a week, or once a month, these tips will help you reduce the amount of dishes you need to wash:

1. Start with an empty dishwasher and dish drain. This way, you can put dishes you only use once straight into the dishwasher and those that you might use again, you can rinse and place in the dish drain.
2. Rinse and reuse what you can. Let’s be careful about food contamination but if you are chopping a bunch or vegetables, you can use one cutting board and one knife. Measuring cups and spoons s well as prep bowls are also easy to rinse and reuse.
3. Use a reversible cutting board. I always cut my vegetables first, rinse the board, and then cut my meat, but if you are using a reversible cutting board, you could always just flip it over.
4. Keep your workspace confined to a small area. When I cook, my work always centers around my cutting board. Despite having a comfortable size kitchen (the reason we bought our home), I try to keep my mess contained and my tools close by. That way, I am not constantly looking for the items I need. Then, when I am finished, I load everything up on the cutting board and take it to the sink.
5. Wash the dishes while the food is in the final cooking stage. Instead of sitting down and waiting for the timer to buzz, go ahead and tackle what is left of the dishes. Washing the dishes before they get crusty and require more strenuous scrubbing saves you time and effort.

I hate dishes. Truly. I literally have to put it on my to-do list each day or I will avoid them. But, to me, cooking one time a week makes a huge difference in the amount of time I get to spend with my family in the evenings, and it is totally worth a little extra in the dish department since the rest of the week, I rarely have to wash a pot. With the majority of the cooking done, the majority of the dishes are done too.

So… maybe I should change this series to “Wash Dishes 1X a Week.”