Saturday 23 May 2009

Washing Dishes

In the early pages of her memoirs, Madeleine Albright describes a home economics class that taught the proper order of washing dishes. I think I encountered this information in school as well, but it's so long ago, I've forgotten what they told me. There was a TV show on here in Britain one time that talked about how to wash dishes (and I actually watched it -- how sad is that?). The only thing I remember from that was that Asian women were amazed to learn that British women don't rinse their dishes. Which is true, Brits don't; and to be honest, I don't bother too much with it either anymore, except for the glass ware and the odd dish that needs it.

Just to make washing the dishes a bit more interesting the other day, I tried to remember and practice Madeleine's advice. I think it went something like:

glassware
silverware
small china
large china
pots and pans

That's all well and good, but when am I supposed to wash my 'tupperware' (small t because it's no such brand), my plastic baggies, the glass jars and tin cans that I'm recycling (I call it washing dishes for the Council), the yoghurt pots I'm going to use for seedlings?

I hope that modern day home ec classes have more up to date information!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As I remember the class, many years ago. You wash the items that go in your mouth first. Glasses being the more fragile, go before the silver. As to all the other thing you wash, those came along long after the rule was made, so you are on your own!
Joanne