Freestyle Dishwashing!

I realized yesterday that Tony is a freestyle dishwasher.

See, the arrangement in our house is that I cook and Tony does the dishes. Most of the time, that just means that he's the one loading and unloading the dishwasher, but occasionally, I'll use a non-dishwasher safe pan and the scrubbing gloves have to come out.

When it comes to the delicates, the hand-washables, Tony is pretty pedestrian. He gets the hot water going, puts some dish soap on the scrubby cloth we use in the sink, and goes to work. It's when the dishwasher door opens that he truly becomes an artist.

I have never seen my husband load the dishwasher the same way twice. Most people, having loaded and unloaded the same dishwasher a few times, develop a system. My mother is the best example - the racks in her dishwasher are practically labelled and if you put something in the wrong way (knives tip down, for example), she becomes like that cross-dressing football kicker in the Ace Ventura movies - "LACES OUT!" - although this time it's more like "SHARP END UP!" (Her contention is that the sharp knife tips cut through the vinyl rack over time. My rebuttal is that the sharp knife tips cut through my hands immediately, so that's the greater good. I lose every time - the argument and some blood.)

But Tony approaches every dishwasher loading as a unique event, as though he's never done it before. The plates go in facing left one time, right the next, the front, the back, sideways. Sometimes he breaks them in half and washes them that way. The glasses and mugs are the same. When I load the dishwasher (which is never or very close to it) the coffee mugs go on the left and the glasses on the right of the top rack. I think there is a lovely symmetry to that. Tony just tosses (sometimes literally) all of them in together. It's like a big, beautiful beverage-container mixer dance in there. No discrimination. He is beverage-blind when it comes to these vessels.

We also load silverware differently and this is where it gets technical. I hate opening a dishwasher and seeing that two spoons or forks have nested in the wash cycle, resulting in them still being dirty. Therefore, I'm really particular about how the silverware goes in the basket (It puts the silverware in the basket) I place a spoon in every slot until I have to double them up, and then I make sure they are facing different directions so as not to "spoon." HAR HAR. Okay, I couldn't resist. Same with the forks, etc. Tony just grabs great handfuls of silverware from the sink and jams them into the basket willy-nilly. It could be one section of just spoons next to one of (tip-down) knives. Makes me so nervous.

At the end of the day, though, it works. Our dishwasher is so powerful (which is why it sounds like a jet taking off during the wash cycle) that it seems to blast any thought of dirt or food from the dishes. And if Tony's going to keep doing the dishes, I'm not going to complain. I find that a loathsome chore, and part of the reason I never cooked when I lived alone or with a less-responsible spouse.

But I do think I'm going to start photographing his dishwasher creations. It's art.