---------how to wash dishes: a 1222 word long tutorial. Greetings to Mazasa the polar bear, and everyone else who may stumble upon these instructions. Today you will be learning how to wash the dishes: a useful life skill. As a bonus challenge, they’re going to be very crusty yucky dishes, because guess what, you have several messy siblings! This tutorial will be very serious and very useful to absolutely everyone and definitely not just me. Step 1: If you need to wash the dishes, pick the prime time to do it. If someone tells you to do it, you’ll automatically want to do anything else. If there’s a lot of people crowding the kitchen, you will get irritated. Make sure to wait long enough that the dishes will fill the dishwasher though, and find a time when no one else is around. Step 2: Get off of your laptop. This is a very lengthly and difficult step that may require another tutorial in full. It may involve closing and reopening tabs several times, finally posting comments that you were overthinking and rewriting, and/or turning off music (impossible). Step 3: Immediately get back on a screen by finding a youtube video, podcast, audiobook, or playlist/album of music to listen to while you embark on the colossal task of doing the dishes. It may be wise to choose something at least an hour long, however more experienced dishpeople may be able to complete the required dishes within a speedy 30 minute timespan (some say that when there are fewer dishes in the sink, it takes less than 20!! wow!!!) Step 4: You’ve probably lost your headphones since you last used them earlier today, so frantically dig around in your stuff for a while before you realize you left them neatly coiled on your desk (as you always do). Step 5: Locate the dishes. Do not be fooled, simply walking to the sink is not enough. To complete this step, you must patrol the entire house to search for the dishes that others left in inconvenient locations. Believe it or not, these are often the very locations that dishes are supposed to be banned from! Banning stuff is totally a good way to stop people from doing bad things, right?? It totally doesn’t just make people more sneaky about doing the bad things, right?!?! (whatever you think this is referencing, you’re wrong, unless you’re right, in which case you probably hate my opinions lol) Step 6: Carry the located dishes to the sink. This can be done quickly if you stack the dishes within each other, but be warned, dear dishperson- if there is liquid in the dishes of any sort, stacking them quickly becomes a precarious situation, in which you will almost always get something gross spilled on you by accident. Only take risks when you’re aware of the consequences. Step 7: Make sure the dishwasher is unloaded. This is yet again a very complicated task, which could warrant its own tutorial. If you’re lucky, someone will have already done this for you (or at least, used enough of the dishes straight out of the dishwasher that it’s mostly empty). ---------steps continue below
---------steps continued: Step 8: Turn on the water. There should be a sort of lever near the base of the sink’s spout, located towards the back of the sink. Grasp the lever with your hand and gradually turn it until the water is at your desired temperature and pressure. If you’re lucky, there should be a second lever on the other side of the sink, with each lever designated to a different water temperature: hot or cold. This allows you to more easily mix the temperatures and avoid accidental burns or ice-cube fingers. Step 9: Find the biggest pot or bowl in the sink and fill it with warm, soapy water. Chances are it’s crusty, and you’ll want to have that crusty stuff soaking. Set this aside on the counter, and as you go through the rest of the steps, drop small dishes and silverware into this basin of water to make the cleaning process easier and free up space. You can also do this with other crusty dishes, such as pans used to fry eggs or bowls that were used to carry rice or pasta. A rule of thumb for when washing dishes: if it’s crusty, soak it. Step 10: As you’re sorting out the dishes, you may also encounter greasy dishes, which are very annoying. To deal with these, set the water as hot as you can bear and carefully hold the dish underneath it. Grease often melts off enough on its own that it’s not annoying to touch afterwards, and then you can get rid of the rest of the grease by simply wiping the dish with a soapy sponge. Step 11: When the greasy dishes have all been rinsed and the crusty ones are all soaking, it’s time to begin loading the dishwasher. You can start by pulling the silverware out of your big water basin dish. The correct place to wash these is in a little plastic basket, often fitted into a side of the bottom dishwasher rack. If it’s still crusty, skip to the plasticy items. These are usually the greasy ones, including cups, plastic storage containers for leftovers, and kids’ plates and bowls. Place these in the top dishwasher rack, with the open side facing downwards or to the side. If a dish is placed facing upwards, it will collect the dishwasher water, and instead of being cleaned will just get full of cloudy white liquid. Step 12: When the top dishwasher rack is full, start dumping out the soaking crusty dishes and scrubbing/scraping off the crust. This should be much easier after soaking. Most of these dishes are heavy duty, made with metal or glass, and can be placed in the bottom dishwasher rack. DO NOT put plastic dishes in the bottom rack. Something WILL get melted, and your siblings will be mad at you for weeks, because whatever’s going to melt will obviously be the most highly loved dish and not the one with the flimsiest meltiest plastic. Step 13: When the dishwasher is full or the sink empty, it’s time to run the dishwasher. Locate the little cave for the soap in the door to the dishwasher. Locate the soap, usually stored under the sink. Dump the soap into that little cave, shut the little door, and then shut the big door to the whole thing. Try to ignore it when you hear the dishes crunch into each other: they’ll be fine, probably. Then you’ll want to press some buttons on the dishwasher, also usually located at the top of that big door. The important one should say something like Start. This will cause the dishwasher to begin running. Step 14: Congrats! You’ve washed the dishes. If you feel like being responsible today, you may also wipe down the crumbs from the sink and dry the puddles of water on the floor, for Extra Points. You may also wander aimlessly around the house cleaning stuff until your music, podcast, or related audio material reaches its conclusion. Otherwise, go back to messing around on your laptop. Step 15: Brace yourself, because even if it feels like you just washed every dish in the house, the sink is going to be piled full again within 24 hours.
