Quit doing the dishes wrong

Every year a new crop of college kids strike out on their own only to discover some unanticipated challenges accompanying their transition to adulthood. The harsh reality of your monthly utilities bill probably stung the first few times — for many of you it still does. But students adapt; before long, you feel like a pro putting your load of white laundry on the correct setting and using about a third of the recommended amount of soap because soap is expensive.

Before you go celebrating your newly-discovered independence, allow me to make what could be considered a bit of a bold claim — you don’t get to call yourself an adult until you can properly load a freaking dishwasher.

It’s like some people make it nearly two decades without so much as glimpsing a properly-loaded wash. What the actual hell are some of you thinking, loading bowls just every which way and then running a load of dishes with two dozen butter knives still sitting in the sink? If you’re the type of monster that jams an unwashed family-sized crockpot into the top shelf of a dishwasher, I’m not totally sure you deserve the right to vote or drive on major roadways.

I’m serious, do not be a part of any major decisions. Make a March Madness bracket and stop hurting others around you.

Look, I am not a crazy person. I don’t care if the fork tines are facing upward or downward. I don’t even particularly care if you group the little cups and the big cups next to each other — for at least eight more months this is still a free country.

But explain to me how you thought placing the large spaghetti pot on the bottom shelf would somehow make cleaning the remaining dishes by hand less work, instead of just sucking it up and using what’s left of your nasty sink-scrubby thing to clean the one pot you probably need to cook dinner later that night anyway?

Let’s not forget that most of you reading this are staying in housing built for students, meaning your appliances are generally crap. Your dishwasher is not going to undo a week’s worth of dried barbecue sauce and the fossilized remains of what I’m sure was a delicious bean burrito. The average student’s dishwasher is a glorified drying rack with the added bonus of a warm rinse to make you feel slightly better about eating off of cookware that may never be truly clean.

What’s so difficult about facing plates the same way on the bottom, lining up bowls along the top shelf behind one another and filling in the gaps with cups? This is not a challenging layout to master. I’ve seen roommates fit a semester’s worth of produce into a tiny mini-fridge, so I know the basic concept of efficient storage exists within the apartment.

You know that painful utilities bill I brought up earlier? Well, it’d be a lot less painful if you didn’t run the washer every time you ate something with marinara sauce.

I know I’m probably already asking too much here, but maybe make an effort to consider the poor roommate who always ends up unloading the dishes when you face your dozen steak knives blades-up in the little silverware container. The half-second it takes you to drop those knives in the right way may save someone an index finger.

The dishwasher is not your washing machine. You can’t just dump stuff in there with some soap and think “Ha! Done.” Take five minutes, put in a fraction of the effort you normally use to stash groceries in the three-dimensional Tetris puzzle that is your refrigerator, and do your freaking dishes right.

— Logan Jones isn’t generally this passionate about household appliance usage. Contact him at Logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj