JOT #23: Everything but...

The kitchen sink. There go the last tiny remnants of meals long forgotten, burned memories, morsels of lonely TV dinners, and the dregs of celebrations. They deserve better than an awkward scrubbing, don't they?

A few ways we try to streamline at home:

• We keep a large saucepan in the sink over a drainpan. Into this goes clean water for rinsing. Slowly it builds until DH and I vie for who will do the last dishes so that the other has to go empty it onto the yard.
• We switch between sprayer and full, move the handle left and right - hot to cold. The sink is a battleground.
  
• We try to decide whether to fill the dishwasher (rinse or no? the dishwasher is only more efficient if you don't!)
• We rinse dishes first in our saucepan in the sink (until it overflows, then we try to get each other to do the dishes) before scrubbing or loading in the dishwasher.
• We try to eat what's on our plates. When that fails (often, with a toddler at home!), we take out all the scraps and debris and put it in the compost first.
• On days when I have to keep the little one busy, I hand him a plastic bottle full of sink water, which he empties around the yard.
  

All this is, of course, when it's not raining. Which it isn't. Still. Which worries me. But then I knew this would happen. Didn't you?