I’d like to discuss a rare topic. Someone has to bring to light this delicate and previously unmentioned issue: Roommates and Their Dishes.
In short, my roommate is ... fine. She cleans the bathroom sometimes, she invites me to fun work parties, and she cooks a lot of bacon, but she is hiding a terrible secret. And I know what it is. She has a fear of washing dishes. She simply refuses to clean them. I have done experiments and silent protests in which I leave all her dirty dishes in the sink for days and days and just when I think I can’t take it anymore, I hear the water running in the kitchen and the sound of glass against the sink. I think HUZZAH! She has finally noticed the smell! She has finally seen that we have been living like Edie and Edie from Grey Gardens! I don’t come out of my room, I just listen to the soft clinky clinky of dishes being done and close my eyes.
Later, I go into the kitchen to grab myself a beer or a popsicle, and I blanch at an unexpected sight. The dishes are not clean. Methodically, precisely, and with a great deal of care, these disgusting dishes have been organized into piles. The filthy plates are neatly stacked, as well as the bowls, and all the utensils we own are organized by type and placed upside down into respective dirty glasses.
How? How did she spend twenty minutes organizing the dirty dishes in the sink and not think to wash a single one? Is it really easier? Is it more satisfying in a way? In her crazed mind, does she think she’s doing me a favor? That now it will be faster for me to actually wash them? Questions I cannot answer. I have simply resorted to messing up any neat piles she makes out of the dishes. I think it’s working. She seems to get exasperated and instead of re-organizing, she actually washes.
We have such a healthy thing going.
