Dishes.

I don't avoid dishes on Sundays but other priorities take
precedence and they start to pile up. On Monday morning
I always have some catching up to do.

Dishes are my nemesis. We go through a lot of dishes. I would like to say that my struggle to keep up with them has mostly to do with my lack of a dishwasher, kids too young to effectively wash them all, frequent hospitality, making all our meals from scratch, or something else outside of me. The truth is, complaining about too many dishes to wash is really lame. I need to grow up and wash the dishes without whining. Recently I decided to make a concerted effort to wash each meal's dishes before the next meal is served. That wasn't very successful so I made a new goal to wash all dishes right away rather than putting any in the sink and to wash one or two extra dishes each time besides. So after breakfast, for example, I try to wash all the dishes used at breakfast and a water glass or two used the evening before.
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My goals are always higher than I can actually reach. What's the point of a goal that doesn't cost me any effort?? I don't always get the dishes done within my self-imposed limit, especially when we leave the house directly after dinner and don't return until past my bedtime. But if I reach my goal more often than not, I have made the kitchen a much more pleasant room to live and work in. It's especially nice at the end of a Sabbath weekend with lots of guests. I have quite enough dishes from 24 hours of very little dish washing without tacking on a bunch of dirty dishes from earlier Saturday, Friday, and even Thursday. Even really dirty meatloaf pans really need more elbow grease than soaking. Sometimes soaking helps, but if I'm not going to wash a particular item then I should wash a couple leftover items instead.
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Later the same day I still have some leftover dishes to wash
but not nearly as many because I've washed a dish here and
a dish there along with Monday's dishes. I can finish all this
now before the next meal.

My sink has been much emptier since I cracked down harder on myself! I've even run out of leftover items to wash several times. (The "leftovers" are from my husband's lunchbox when he returns home at 9:30p or brings it in the next day; yesterday's water glasses which we use for a whole day and evening; husband's dinner dishes hours after the rest of us eat dinner; dishes from meals when I was required to leave immediately after; dishes from my lunchbox when we eat somewhere else; empty casserole after a potluck; etc.) I am much happier and glad to recover a little more space to work in.
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Linked to Works for Me Wednesday