Dirty dishes on the left (or right)

Just choose!

Don’t mix dirty and clean things!

Have a system for your sink area and make sure everyone living there knows what it is! Believe me, even a two-year-old thrives on knowing where things go. Toddlers make great policemen, by the way! They are so shocked by transgressions.

If your dishwasher (or dish drainer) is on the right, then your clean area should be on the right. That means that dirty things should enter the work area on the left.

If possible, don’t cross over. It’s better to have the dirty-dish area closer to the table where you’re eating and not have to go past the clean area to get to it. The temptation to put a dirty glass down on the clean side will be almost irresistible.

If you can swing it, the best layout is to have clean dish storage over in your clean dish area. In my kitchen, that’s not possible, but when we renovated, I managed to move the storage from directly over my dirty-dish area to the island that’s opposite the dishwasher — I had the island made with large drawers and it holds a service for 12! You can see it here.

It wasn’t always this way, though, and that was okay. We made it work and so can you!

The main thing is to conceptualize the process and then arrange everything around it! Dirty on one side, clean on the other.

Washing Up by Jessie Wilcox Smith

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My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory

As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, coming from my experience of 45 years of marriage and raising seven children, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!