Today's Review: Washing Up

I just washed up. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. There's no room in my kitchen for a dishwasher, which I lament daily. There are only four people living in this place, but if the washing up is left for even a day, it seems like all our cutlery and dishes are ready to be washed. It's nice to see the end result of plates and bowls stacked nicely on the side, glistening in the fake kitchen light with cleanliness, but the road to this satisfying ending is dirty, wet, and it makes your fingers all wrinkly.

It's quite nice at first. A nice big bowl of warm, soapy water, taking the glasses and cutlery, giving them a nice once over with your cleaning instrument of choice. But then it gets to the nasty stuff. The dried on food, the clumps left on the stuff you cooked with. After a while these start to take their toll on the water, and suddenly it's brown. There's stuff floating in it. That's what you're washing your stuff in. You start to question the efficacy of what you're doing.

That's why a dishwasher would be so awesome. You shove it in, turn it on and it's done. Yes, stubborn stuff might not come off, but it's a hell of a lot less effort and dirtiness to get the job done. If I had the room for one, I would have bought one ages ago. But instead i'm left trying to clean stuff in dirty water, things brushing against my hands that I can't see, like some kind of really shitty horror movie.

Even if I scrub and scrub 'til the dish looks beautifully clean, it dries to show some kind of stubborn stain. I swear they appear after i'm done scrubbing just to taunt me. Or maybe i'm just really bad at washing up. It's probably the latter. I used to be even worse when I used dish cloths. Cloths don't do anything. They can clean up some glasses, sure. But when you've got some cottage pie remnants to remove, you need something tougher. Now I opt for the sponge/scourer combination. Sponge one side, pad the other. You can clean anything with them. Dish cloths are for losers.

I used to work in the BHS restaurant. Washing up there was some good stuff. There was a massive dishwasher. You stack the plates up on plastic trays, push them through, and it suds, washes and dries them all within minutes. They come out hot, dry and, most importantly, clean. That's my dream washing up machine, unfortunately it would costs thousands of pounds and take up the entirety of my living room. But by gum I would have clean dishes.

Instead, i'm left to toil away, day after day. Maybe one day i'll move to a place where I can claim a spanking new dishwasher as my own. But until then i'll continue to daydream as a small, soggy piece of lettuce passes between my wrinkly fingers. Fuck you, washing up.

My rating: