Preface:

Over my many years of NEET-induced poverty, I have never once owned or operated a mechanical dishwashing machine. In these years I have observed and learned much of the art of washing dishes by hand. I now know the secret to maximum clean dishes with minimal time and effort, and have come here to share some of my insights with you.
Whether you are a fellow layabout who refuses to find a job and buy a dishwasher, a paranoid nutjob preparing for the inevitable collapse of civilization, or just a Regular Joe whose dishwasher broke down and the handyman will only be available next Tuesday, I hope you will find this guide helpful.

Part I: Alternative Routines Overview

Let's begin by examining what I call the Naive Dish Washing Routine, also known as the College Student Method:

1. You use a clean dish.


2. Once done, you place the dirty dish in the sink.


3. If you are out of a specific type of tableware, e.g. out of clean forks, you grab a dirty one from the sink and clean it for immediate use.


4. When the sink is overflowing, you panic and start doing the dishes.


5. Halfway through (after perhaps 15-30 minutes), you get tired and leave the rest "for later".

You might have noticed several flaws to this system. First, it rarely (if ever) leaves your sink completely empty, which is bad for aesthetic, hygienic and practical reasons. Second, it does not stagger the dish washing effort over time, instead creating large lumps of uninterrupted hard labor which may prove lethal to the workaphobic. Third, it leads to scenarios where you are forced to clean something at what might be an inopportune time.

So the Naive method is no-good. What are the alternatives? A common option is the On-the-spot Cleaning Method, which you might know as How Mom Does It:

1. You use a clean dish.


2. Once done, you immediately clean it.


3. Sink remains empty at all times.

This method removes the first two major flaws of the Naive system, but that is at the cost of immeasurably exacerbating the third. What if you finish a glass of soda and want to return to whatever you were doing without delay? Do you pause a game just to wash the glass? The amount of mental focus you lose in distracting yourself from more important tasks can easily outweigh whatever benefits you may get out of maintaining an empty sink. What if the game is online? Can't pause those! And, of course, there's the most pressing problem of what if you just don't feel like doing it at the moment?

Clearly, we need a better way.

Part II: The Scientific Method

This is why I designed what I term the Scientific Method to Dish Washing. Although it may seem daunting at first, the routine can be boiled down to one simple guiding principle:

Always attempt to compensate for the dishes you dirty by cleaning others first.

That may seem not too different from the On-the-spot method, but looks can be deceiving. While the On-the-spot method is rigid and inflexible, the Scientific method is dynamic and adaptive. It allows your sink to fill up and empty out as your available time and willpower wax and wane. It does so via the introduction of what I call the Dish Deficit (DD).

The DD is an abstract value assigned to every type of cookware and tableware in your kitchen, roughly corresponding to the amount of effort required to clean it. It is measured in Cups. The exact values will vary from person to person and from object to object, but a very rough guide goes as follows:

• Cup = 1 DD Cup


• Small plate = 0.5 DD Cups


• Large plate = 1 DD Cup


• Glass = 0.75 DD Cups


• Spoon/Knife = 0.5 DD Cups


• Fork = 1 DD Cup


• Small bowl = 1 DD Cup


• Large bowl = 1.5 DD Cups


• Frying pan = 2 DD Cups


• Pot = 1.5 DD Cups


• Garlic press = 3 DD Cups


• Grater = 2 DD Cups


• etc. etc. etc.

The DD is further weighted to account for the amount of dirty dishes of any category currently in the sink. We call this the Overdue Factor (OF). It is a calculated by subtracting half of the base value multiplied by the percentage of dirty dishes of said category. So for example, assuming you have 10 forks in total, and 4 of them are currently dirty, the OF is equal to 40% x (0.5 x (base value)) = 0.4 x (0.5 x 1) = 0.2, meaning the final DD of any individual fork in the sink is equal to (base value) - (OF) = 1 - 0.2 = 0.8 DD.

Now whenever you dirty a dish, you should clean dishes of equivalent DD value. In our previous example, with 4 dirty forks in the sink, suppose you now need a large bowl for your ramen noodles. A large bowl has a DD of 1.5, so before you grab that bowl (or while you wait for the kettle to boil), you clean two forks. Each fork's weighted DD value is 0.8, meaning you have successfully cleaned 0.8 x 2 = 1.6 DD, while dirtying 1.5 DD, resulting in a net profit of 0.1 DD. Continue with this method, and these small surpluses accumulate, meaning your sink will always trend towards emptying out.

Part III: Deferring and Expediting

So far so good. But that still leaves us with a major unsolved question: What if you are too lazy to clean the dishes right now? The answer comes in two mechanisms: Deferring and Expediting.

Deferring is what you do when you do when you don't compensate for your dirtying with an equivalent amount of DD cleaning. This could come in the form of a Full Deference, when you don't DD compensate at all, or a Partial Deference, when you clean dishes, but not enough to cover for the DD value you have dirtied. Expediting is the reverse, when you overcompensate doing the dishes, cleaning a substantially higher DD value compared to the one you dirty.

When should you Defer and when should you Expedite? The Scientific Method does not prescribe exact rules for these procedures, but certain heuristics still apply. Generally speaking, you should only Defer when absolutely necessary, such as when drunk and/or chatting on the internet. Expediting can occur whenever you feel like it, of course, but also at opportune moments when you are in the kitchen with nothing else to do, such as when you wait for the oven to heat up or for your coffee to brew. As long as you do not abuse Deferring and you Expedite at least as often as you Defer, your sink will remain more often empty than not.

Part IV: Conclusion

And there you have it - the Scientific Method to Dish Washing. By following this routine, you'll be able to maintain an empty and hygienic sink while minimizing the amount of time and effort you need to put in and maximizing time for other, more important, computer-based activities. As long as you pay attention to your DD tally, you will be able to keep your kitchen clean without compromising your carefree NEET lifestyle. Dishwashing will no longer seem like a chore, but rather a game of managing deficits and surpluses. Who knows, it may even become fun!

Good luck and happy washing!