Dishes: To Soak or Not To Soak?

Before you wash the dishes-- or load them into the dishwasher-- do you give them a good soak? Before you take arms against a set of filthy pots and pans, do you let them marinate for a while? Or do you jump right in and clean them immediately?

To soak or not to soak?

While I'm well aware of the issue with dividing people into exactly two categories, there are occasions when it's necessary to boil things down to black and white.

Some people fill their gas tank when it gets a bit low, other folks love to drive around on fumes.

And some people are "soakers" while others are "immediate washers." There is no in-between.

Giving the dishes a purposeful (and artful) soak

After a heated discussion at a holiday party, it seems that most men are soakers. If I were going to be sexist, I would say this has to do with the fact that men have a better knowledge of chemistry and thus understand that water is "the universal solvent." Water dissolves more substances that any other liquid on earth. It is the enemy of many part of your abode-- your roof, foundation, wiring, sheetrock, carpet and wood flooring . . . but water is the friend of clean dishes.

Women are pursuing STEM fields more than ever, so I'm going to assume that they know the chemical potential of letting things soak in water. So it must be something else.

I am a soaker, of course. Dirty dishes? Science to the rescue!

Time + water = cleaner dishes

My wife is not a "soaker." She scoffs at soaking and considers it lazy. When the dishwasher is empty and I plop a dish in the sink and fill it with water, this irritates her to no end. Perhaps this is the root of the dilemma. Non-soakers like to get right to the task. Get 'er done! My friend Terry, one of the few males who is not a soaker, said that instead of soaking he just "applies a bunch of force with a sponge." To me, it seems silly to use force when you don't need to . . . if he just let those pans soak for a few days, he wouldn't need to use any force at all. I should also point out that Terry puts cream and sugar in his coffee, so he barely represents the typical male.

One particularly masculine dude said that one of the reasons he needed to soak the dishes was that when he was done with dinner, he needed to "have a lie down." I think this is reasonable; after a hearty meal, who wants to stick their hands into a wet stack of dishes when they could repose on the couch?

So with some skillful balancing, some artful arrangement of the pots, pans, dishes, and utensils, you can make the water work for you, while you have your digestive "lie down." Then you're doing your work while you're supine! Isn't that the goal?

The dishwasher isn't going to get peanut butter off a spoon, or yogurt and peanut butter out of a bowl. It's not going to clean a pan with charred food remnants. So you can either dig in, apply some force, and get your hands moist and dirty . . . or you could pour a bit of water in there and give everything a good soak. Then, while you are going about your business, the miracle of the universal solvent is happening right in your kitchen. And you don't need to supervise.

Soakers aren't lazy, they're smart, but the most commonly posed rebuttal to soaking posed by non-soakers is that soakers are just procrastinating in the hopes that someone else-- most likely a woman . . . or Terry-- will come along and do the dishes. While this is certainly a possibility, it's not the primary reason for soaking. This is just an (unfortunate) side effect. I really want to do the dishes . . . after they soak for a bit, so it's not so much of a chore. I think most soakers feel the same way. If non-soakers are so wound up to do a chore, instead of heroically swooping in and doing the dishes that are soaking, they should organize the tupperware or match socks or some other task that doesn't interrupt the scientific process happening in the sink. But this won't happen, because in this case, there really are two kinds of people:

1) people who can let the dishes soak, let the food decay, let the universal solvent work while you sleep, and

2) people who just have to get it done, no matter how much physical exertion the task requires.