Who Should Do the Dishes?

The children, obviously. But, before the children are able, and after they fly the coop, who should do them? They have to get done, you know.

Now, I’m not universalizing anything below. I do think there are some universal principles underlying what I’m about to write; you can decide what they are.

I had the following thought whilst doing the dishes last week: “Maybe I get to eat like a king in my house because I do the dishes.”

In short, I do eat like a king. I married a woman who couldn’t cook. She had one or two things in her repertoire; that’s what we were working with. Then she decided to be a vegetarian for a while after we got married (I wouldn’t have dared). Over the years, she’s worked at her craft. I can honestly say that eating at home these days is twice or three times as good as going out to eat.

Here’s the issue though: in order to eat like a king, there will be heavy pots and pans dirty every night. All sorts of measuring spoons and cups as well. Not to mention the plates and silverware we use to eat the food. That’s a lot of work to clean up!

But it’s also a lot of dishes to make dirty in the first place.

I wondered to myself whether a sane wife would make as many dishes as this if she knew she were going to have to be the one to clean it all up. Why make all the mess if you’re doing all the cleaning? I’m a simple man, guys. After all, teachers only need to grade the assignments they give in the first place (Mr. Klunick’s Law of Grading).

So, we eat like royalty in the Klunick household. It’s a fact. But I think that we get to eat so well because I’ve always done the dishes. This isn’t something I had figured out before about last week. I had just done them to help out. Then I kept doing them so we could start Family Worship earlier. Now, I realize that a byproduct of my doing the dishes is that I get to enjoy the food all the more because it tastes so good. Amen!