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If you dislike emptying or loading the dishwasher, or even want to know how to speed up the process by making the tasks easier, check out these 16 easy-breezy tips on creating a routine for emptying and loading the dishwasher.
Try getting into the routine or habit of loading dishes into the dishwasher as soon as you can, regardless if it’s as you cook or shortly after eating.
And if you find yourself and others feeling the urge to procrastinate, just remember this: the longer you wait to do it, the more scrubbing it will take to get the job done. In other words, the sooner you do it, the less effort and fewer steps you’ll have to put into the task.
Benefits of Loading the Dishwasher ASAP
Check out our other time-saving kitchen tips next with our 21 Tips on Cleaning the Kitchen As You Cook (new tab).
Having a no-dishes-in-the-sink policy for the rest of your household dishwasher routine can be a great way to keep up with the practice and benefits of loading things into the dishwasher as soon as possible.
This generally means anyone capable of doing their dishes can take care of their own mess when it makes sense to do so, instead of leaving their mess in the sink to be taken care of later.
Benefits
Tips
Need more decluttering tips? Check out our post on 18 Signs that It’s Time Declutter Your Home next (new tab).
Adopting a schedule or cleaning routine can help people get on track and stay consistent. Cleaning routines can also get the rest of the household on board and in sync with time and practice.
As a result, you may find it a lot easier to maintain your home while helping others get on the same page, too.
Cleaning schedules or routines can be personalized to suit your household’s needs along with your personality, schedule, weaknesses, habits, and even preferred cleaning methods.
Sometimes, even experimenting and mixing and matching based on what suits your mood or needs can be a good way to go about it.
Morning Cleaning Routines and Evening Cleaning Routines can be an ideal way to incorporate emptying, running, or loading the dishwasher into your day-to-day schedule or routine with ease.
Best of all, you can customize your nighttime and morning routines to suit your needs, schedule, and household all while mastering the art of cleaning smarter instead of harder.
While some people like to run the dishwasher during the daytime, it’s often more efficient for many households to do so at night and after dinner. However, if you’re concerned about noise, you can also set the dishwashing machine to run on Delay and have it run in the morning.
In either case, it’s typically easier to empty the dishes first thing in the morning–or even the night before. This way, you’ll have an empty dishwasher to load dishes into immediately instead of everything getting piled into the sink while waiting for the load to finish.
Ensuring that the dishwasher is available as early in the day as possible–especially in a multi-person household–will also encourage more consistency with other housemates and cleaner habits.
However, do whatever works for you, when it works for you, regardless if that means running and emptying the dishwasher at night or tackling the unloading once you wake up.
If you have other people living with you and find that you frequently do the bulk of the dishes, or simply despite doing the task, consider asking them if they would mind helping you out.
However, it’s important to remember that each person is different and that you may need to negotiate a little or take on other tasks they might dislike in turn.
I found that my ex didn’t mind emptying the dishwasher and was happy to make that one of his permanent tasks along with trash and yardwork, mainly since I did the bulk of the cleaning and often other tasks that he hated doing.
When living temporarily with my mother, however, I found that she preferred to rotate or split up each load, with one of us handling silverware and the other plates or vice versa.
Staying consistent with when and how you empty or load the dishwasher, and encouraging others to try to do the same, can greatly speed up the amount of time it takes to do the task.
As a result, you’ll likely find that your kitchen will run more smoothly, giving you and others more time to focus on more important tasks. Practice makes perfect.
Try running the dishwasher around times when you might empty leftovers and expired from the fridge each week, such as around Grocery or Trash Day.
Doing so can help you build a good cleaning routine and may even turn the task into an automatic habit for you and others in your household.
When you stack other chores on top of emptying or running the dishwasher, you can significantly speed up and reduce your cleaning time and effort by multitasking.
Stacking chores around emptying or loading the dishwasher can also work as a Jedi Mind Trick for yourself when in regards to chores that you may otherwise procrastinate on since you can get things going before you have the chance to change your mind or overthink it.
Stackable Tasks for Emptying the Dishwasher
Looking for dishwasher-cleaning tips? Check out our How Often Should You Clean Your Dishwasher? and How to Deep Clean a Dishwasher Tutorial posts next (new tabs).
You can eliminate a lot of time and effort with emptying the dishwasher by getting into the habit of loading dishes and flatware in properly and with like items. Doing so will reduce steps and unnecessary cleaning.
For instance, you can try putting forks in one section of the silverware caddy, spoons in the center portion, and then knives in the other. Similar can be done with plates, bowls, mugs, and other related dishware.
That way, as you unload the dishwasher, you can quickly grab and put these items away without having to think so much about it.
You can also stack like-items on the counter prior to putting them away to help speed up the unloading process, reduce noise, and spend left effort on the task, rather than trying to unload and put away everything one piece at a time.
Stacking like-items on dish towels or microfiber drying mats can also speed up how quickly you’ll be able to unload items since you won’t have to worry about how gently to place things, thanks to having a softer surface to work with.
By loading and stacking like-items, you may even find that you can get the task done in just a minute or two.
Entertaining yourself while cleaning is often the best way to make nearly any situation or task more bearable.
In fact, many people actually find that they wind up enjoying doing tasks and look forward to doing them in the future once they learn to make the process a little more entertaining. Time will also likely go by faster once a little fun is mixed in.
Ways to Time & Challenge Yourself
Conclusion
In this post, we covered 16 tips to speed up loading and unloading the dishwasher and make the overall process easier through scheduling and household routines. Some of these tips and examples include the following:
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