Dishes and laundry are a total non-issue.

I think it is completely reasonable not to consider your circumstance when giving general advice. The vast majority of people can choose a much simpler solution because they have much simpler problems. It's interesting to hear what people in your situation need to do, but I wouldn't expect many people to relate because they have no such experience.

Sure, only 23% of households have 4+ members, but they contain 44% of all Americans. Likewise, the 1.3% of households with 7+ members contain 6.2% of Americans.

And there are more people in households of 6+ members than in single-member households.

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1                     28%              11%
  2                     34%              27%
  3                     15%              18%
  4                     13%              20%
  5                      6%              12%
  6                      2.2%             5.3%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1-3                   77%              56%
  4-6                   21%              38%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%

I mean occasionally my wife and I will both purchase bread on the way home resulting in us having a lot of bread, but I can't think of a time we both accidentally bought a refrigerator or oven on the same weekend.

But even having more money, will people buy robot appliances? Again, my gut feeling is that singles are actually more likely to buy things like that because the downside of making an ineffective purchase is dramatically lower.

My children are 3 and 5 which is why they're not much help with washing/drying and why the bedtime routine is more involved - bath, drying, brushing teeth, packing up, reading, answering questions about why they have to go to bed, why it's still light outside, how they are actually tired and so on.

Plus even our ten-year-old dishwasher is more energy efficient than hand-washing. It's more than paid for itself by now.

I didn't mind doing laundry when I lived by myself.

Then I started living with my wife. She has laundry preferences (among other things) different from mine (whoa!).

Then we had a kid. And another. And another. Not a family of 7, but I think I know where you're coming from. It was a walk in the park, individually. A complete non-issue.

The other benefit we find of using a dishwasher in a family is that the dishwasher produces a consistent and good result as compared to a 8-12 year old trying to hand-wash, and kids can be trained to competently unload things if you store plates and glasses "low". So the aggregate effort for parents is almost zero.

I'm thinking that the bulk of people giving advice like yours live in smaller-scale households and don't entertain, or don't entertain in a way that generates any dishes. I think a dishwasher would probably be a bit weird if I lived alone, as it would take ages to fill with dirty dishes and I would probably wind up having to retrieve stuff from it all the time.

We just don't have that much hand-washing to do. They are still rubbish at the task even when made to do it.

When I entertain, I deal with things as required. (Admittedly not often...)

*I mean the efficient ones (a gallon of golf balls with 1 gallon of water marketing gimmicks, etc), not the "low flow" crappy ones.

With a relatively new dishwasher you can put your dishes in completely dirty with no rinsing. They're a solid time savings for sure.

I agree that washing dishes immediately after use reduces the effort to almost nothing. I try to do so as much as possible. Laundry is not as precise.

I can’t immediately run today’s clothes through my washer and dryer alone without wasting resources. I also need to remove my laundry from the dryer soon after it finishes if I want to avoid wrinkled clothes. For these reasons, I only do laundry in large loads and I have to schedule around the task. This is even more of an issue for people who do not have laundry machines in their homes.

Similarly, washing clothes is not a significant time sink, 99% of the process is done by a machine unattended, I only need to collect the clothes, transfer them from the washer to the drier and put them away afterwards. Or put them on a hanger to dry if they require ironing.

That's about 25% of the US population. Those of us raising families do quite a lot of labour every day, at least while the kids are small.

A quick mental estimate says daily dishes for family of 4, 2 of whom are preschoolers, is about 12X my singleton workload. Also laundry every day at least one load, maybe two.

We're a family of 4. My trick is that I'm super damn quick.

Not the only one. Admittedly I don't have kids, but I'm familiar with family life and I don't think this is really that much of a problem.

I think a lot of people suffer from the problem of not being educated about how to do basic things around the house. They make huge problems for themselves. For dishes, the main key is just not to ever have dirty dishes. Definitely, do not store dirty dishes in the sink. Not only does it stop you from cooking, but it means you are almost certain to break stuff when you do eventually wash it (because there is no room).

The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need. Instead, as you cook, clean. If you are in a typical North American kitchen, box off 90% of it and constrain yourself to an area that includes the sink, an area the size of your cutting board and your stove/oven. Hopefully the sink, board and stove are right next to each other. Keep a small dish of hot water and detergent right next to the sink with a sponge or cloth in it. Replenish occasionally (I usually use the kettle since it is faster and more efficient than trying to get small amounts of hot water out of the tap -- I lived 5 years in a house without hot running water and never missed it!).

Whenever you use anything, clean it right away. Also put it away. Specifically: pots, knives and cutting boards should never be dirty. Get a knife board (or similar). Clean your knife and put it away every time you use it. The 2 seconds you save by putting your knife on the board (or other hazardous place) is not worth it. Pots should be cooking something, storing something, or spotless. Similarly, your board should be in use or clean.

Try to make due (or 95% of what you do) with a frying pan, 1 small pot and one large pot. Then reuse these as you are cooking. Also, buy 1 good knife and do everything with it. Think of these things as being in your cache. Make it a cache miss to swap out to something else. Obviously you will occasionally need specialised tools, but try to keep these really infrequent. Finally, wash the kitchen before you serve the meal. It sounds crazy, but you should be able to do it in less than 5 minutes, so the food can wait. Not only will your kitchen always be clean, but you will dramatically increase the speed at which you can cook. It is really astounding how much better it is.

At that point, the only thing you ever need to wash are the dishes you are eating off of. If you are a couple, then it takes virtually no time. If you are a family, then this is good "family time" (teaching children that working is part of life is not the most terrible thing you can do).

For laundry, my wife does the laundry every day that's sunny. We store dirty laundry in the machine. (Hint: Always leave the machine door open if you can. A dry machine is a not-moldy-machine). As soon as we get up my wife turns on the machine. After breakfast she hangs the laundry outside. Total time: 5 minutes. When she gets home at the end of the day she folds the laundry. I work from home so if it starts to rain, or is too windy, I take the laundry in and fold it. Total time: 5 minutes.

When we lived in London (i.e. a-not-sunny-place), we hung everything indoors -- just make sure that the room is well ventilated, or you can cause problems with moisture. It sometimes took 2 days for some things to dry thoroughly, but you can quickly put a few things in the dryer for a couple of minutes if you don't want to wait -- normally takes less than 5 minutes to finish it off.

I used to wash all the laundry by hand (really)! Before breakfast, soak. Before taking a shower, drain and re-soak with detergent. After having a shower (not having clothes on means you don't have to worry about getting wet), wash and wring out the detergent. Rinse and soak in rinsing water. After getting dressed, brushing teeth, etc, wring out the water, then lay the clothes out onto towels. Roll up the towels with the clothes inside. Twist the towels to transfer the water into the towels. Total time: about 10 minutes. Downside: you need a couple of extra towels that you need to hang.

Now, the above is hard work if you have a lot of clothes, but it's practically trivial if you are doing it every day (I still do this when travelling). To be honest, a modern washing machine is stupidly efficient and does quite a good job, so might as well use it, but it's useful to realise how little hassle it is to do it by hand -- as long as you are doing it every day!

The extra "during cooking" dishwashing steps of intermediate pots, knives, cutting boards, grating boards, and other intermediate cooking tools & pots, blender parts etc may satisfy a sense of order in the kitchen but it's but that's not enough to sway most people over.

And now the dishwasher feels like a good idea again. And you can accumulate dishes in it all day, so it also handles the between meals glasses, coffee mugs, french presses, sandwich making dishes etc.

In my opinion it's not necessary to be too strict about it, aim to have your kitchen 80% clean before eating, then clean up right after dinner.

The reason it helps is that if you build up a big mess in the kitchen, it makes the task of cooking seem overwhelming.

While this 'clean as you go' habit seems to be about cleaning,it's really about nutrition.

If your kitchen is well stocked and clean, you will find it easier to cook your own meals, which will do wonders for your overall health.

This is what I do, but everything else goes in the dishwasher. :)

Yeah, it is much of a problem. Once you get one kid, your dishwasher will be used more than merely 1/3 more, as will your laundry machine.

Every time I clean a pan or dish or fork or knife I use water, soap, and I gotta let it dry (which uses a rack which takes up space) after which I can soak up the remaining water and put it away. If I'm already doing that, it goes in one go, called dish washing or I put it in this spot where I put in a tablet and let it work for a few hours, called a dishwasher. Which is, incidentally, very space efficient and consumes very little time. I'm a proponent of reusing dishes, glasses, etc but with cats I don't find it very hygienic.

You want to wash your dishes for 5 minutes after you finished cooking your meal. Well, that's your choice. I want to cook my food, serve it with the family, and watch them enjoy the food and (potentially) receive feedback or even redo parts or grab additional spoon or sauce or whatever and perhaps most importantly for myself: enjoy the food I made, served hot, with my family. To hell I would stand 5 more minutes in the kitchen cleaning my mess up. That's for after dinner! And cleaning it up means putting it in the dishwasher.

> The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need.

Then you get more pots, or you put your dishwasher on more often, or you wash the pot(s) by hand. We, or well generally my partner rather, do the latter but we also have enough pots and pans to easily last for a couple of days. They're washed in one go, not in multiple. I think time-wise, that's more efficient, regardless of you saying is better (not sure why actually).

Putting my clothes in my garden is a sure way to attract cats, thieves, and bad weather. I don't have a dryer (am considering getting one given a baby is due). Putting clothes on doors and a rack seems to work well, though does require ventilation indeed. I can also recommend to use vinegar as fabric softener.

Your advice is interesting and inspiring, even more so for road warriors and the like but its just less practical than using machines for the tough work. Why? It saves us time and effort. Time and effort is what you sorely lack when you get kids. You don't have kids, I suspect you underestimate the impact of having even one (young) child. If you have a baby you can say bye bye to your sleep rhythm. Do you think I'd love to do dishes regularly between my sleeps? No way, I'd rather have the dishwasher on, let it dry (you gotta keep it open to let it dry via environment), and be done with it.

I just throw them all in the machine and run the machine once a week, way less effort, way less time wasted.

Maybe it's my cooking techniques that are the problem. I do somehow manage to use 6 pans to make a dinner for 2.

I actually have two dish washers and this is indeed a problem. We just clear out what's left into the cupboard. If your usage pattern is non-standard, for example because people come over, it also breaks down. But on the whole I'm happy with the time savings.

My other favorite is the Italian dish drainer (a few examples here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/759138080911631519 ) -- basically the cabinet above the sink is a dish drainer with an open bottom.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_drying_cabinet

https://maisonderose.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/cera-una-volta...

http://www.lasoffittaretro.it/classico/48-scolapiatti-in-fer...

until houses had water (and thus sinks), I believe that as soon as sinks were installed in kitchens, the one or the other form of "scolapiatti" became in use, this is an early, primitive, type:

http://www.comune.sangiorgiodellarichinvelda.pn.it/fileadmin...

And this is another example:

https://www.picclickimg.com/d/w1600/pict/192394042552_/AAX-P...

1: https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/kitchen/dish-washers/dishdra...

I considered it a non-negotiable to never live with them again if given the choice. The small ones just aren't practical if you cook. Put on some rice, boil some veggies, fry up some meat, and suddenly you're already out of room. You've not done cutlery, breakfast, lunch or desert. And god help you if you cook anything more complicated than that...

But double, that I would believe.

I've heard that's how these are used, never tried it myself.

Then we moved house, and the new one had an old regular dishwasher that often doesn't quite clean bowls properly -- can't quite bring myself to chuck out a working dishwasher to get dishdrawers, but if the dishwasher breaks any time soon...

Secondly, there are drawer-typ dishwashers made specifically for this. They are way overpriced, but are really useful and pretty darn small. One or two of those and you really don’t need to put dishes away anymore.

But you could probably also get by with less.

Changed my life. I really hated having to do laundry.