Taking Turns Doing Dishes

Washing dishes or cleaning up after preparing a meal is everyone’s least favorite job. I have yet to meet anyone that just loves to do dishes. Sure, some people have resigned themselves to doing the dishes because they would rather do that than prepare the meal, but to genuinely look forward to it? The only time doing dishes is fun is when you are doing them with someone else and you are able to have a discussion with them.

Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose when you do the dishes usually. You’ll have dishes to wash basically every single day that you make meals at home. Depending on how many people are in your household, you may be running the dishwasher every single day if you have one - if you don’t have one then you’ll be washing that many dishes each day. That can be a lot of dish washing that needs to be done.

If you have a dishwasher, then you’ve got a hand up on those without one. You don’t have to do a full dishwashing session every night, but you do have to clean the dishes off enough to get them into the dishwasher. Also, there are usually at least a handful of dishes that need to be washed by hand as they’re not allowed in the dishwasher or else they’re too big - you’ll have to clean them by hand.

One of the best ways to get out of washing dishes every single day is to move the responsibility around between everyone in the household, at least that’s old enough to wash the dishes. By the time a child is 10 years old, they generally should be able to help with the dishes whether it’s washing them or getting them into the dishwasher. Get your kids involved if they’re old enough to help out with dishes.

While having everyone help with the dishes is a simple way to get everyone involved, not everyone is going to be thrilled about this setup. If you’re the one that has been doing the dishes on most nights, then you’ll likely find that you really like this setup. But your kids probably aren’t going to be quite as enthusiastic about helping out. There are a couple of different ways to get them a little more excited.

The first option is to let the person that does the dishes that night be the one that then decides what activity will be done that night. They get to choose the show that goes on the TV, or they get to decide what games you play as a family. In other words, the person that does the dishes gets the control for the night. This will generally motivate some of the younger kids in the house as they want to choose what’s happening.

Another option is to lock all media until the dishes are done for the night. No phones, tablets, TVs, or otherwise for the kids until the dishes are done. This is also motivating, but it’s less ideal as it’s more of a way that you’re forcing the kids to do the dishes. Ideally they’re motivated to do it for other reasons rather than being forced, so use this as your second option.

Have everyone in the household help with doing dishes. This takes the responsibility off of you every night and lets others help participate in the house duties.