Soaking dishes - just laziness disguised, right?

[Darkmodealways]

This just infuriates me so much!

Just gone to go to bed and the sink is full of tonight’s dishes that are ‘soaking’. Eg dishes left for me to wash up in the morning! My teens were meant to have done the dishes earlier.

My DH is actually the worst for this, he eats soup every day for lunch but refuses to do it in the microwave so leaves all the saucepans piling up ‘soaking’ until I relent and wash them up.

Its just laziness masked as being ‘helpful’, right?!

DH is a soaker and it drives me up the fucking wall.

I don’t agree with this! Warm water doesn’t do anything to kill germs it probably makes them grow more as they like warm temps. Bacteria soup. Water would need to be super hot to kill germs. But that’s not what is needed anyway - cold water soaking is perfectly fine for loosening dried on food

but the man in my house does use soaking to avoid proper washing up. When he does it the fairies have to come to finish the job 🙄

Why are you relenting and washing up, though? After they’ve soaked for a bit, ask them why they haven’t done their washing up. Tell them it’s not acceptable and you’re not a skivvy.

The soaking isn’t the issue. The assumption that you’ll wash up is.

If we've had a casserole or something that has baked on bits then I put it to soak immediately and it's generally fine to go into the dishwasher by bedtime. Soaking has its place but I think it very rarely needs to be done overnight so absolutely agree that your family are being lazy OP. It's a bit my family's infuriating habit of putting things on top of the dishwasher. Even when it's empty. 😡