The New Method

Cleanliness in the apartment had reached an all time low. The Dinner Club had come and gone twice, leaving not only a stack of used dishes, but all that went into the preparation of the feasts. Pots, pans, and yes, even a basting brush or two.

When Nicolas came over for a cup of tea yesterday, I left him in the living room to go prepare a tea tray. I surveyed the scene, but couldn’t find a single mug. There were dishes stacked in the sink, on the washing machine, on the counter, on the stove, and now, little piles were springing up on the floors. The greatness of the job overwhelmed me, so I chose to ignore it. As had Matt.

But tea required two mugs, and one spoon for stirring. And so I began my careful excavation, removing the top two layers of dishes from the sink and placing them in the entryway. I would clean up any residue later. As I tried to slide a pan out, I ruined weeks of careful balancing. Everything fell and something broke a glass. One of the pots hit the wall so hard that about eight boxes of tea fell about me. I shouted to Nicolas that everything was under control, but it was too late. There he was, his polished shoes among dirty dishes. “Nico, you have to leave, this is embarrassing,” I said, so he backed away, knocking over a basket of recycling by the front door.

When I finally pulled it together and carried the serving tray into the living room a few minutes later, I thought I caught him eyeing the mugs for cleanliness. Not that this was a bad idea. He waited until I’d had a chance to sit down, put down his mug and said, “Emily, I need to teach you the Art of Cleaning as You Go.”

Ah yes, the Art of Cleaning as You Go. That elusive creature. When I was a child, my mother made valiant efforts to teach me this art. If I just cleaned up one game before moving to the next, a big mess could never accumulate, and I would never end up in big trouble (B.T.). Well, at least not for messiness. Even recently, she advised me to spend just five minutes straightening up before I went to bed. But then I would lose five minutes of sleep, I argued.

Yesterday I argued, “Yes, that’s fine and good if you’re lazily cooking along, but Nico, what about when you’re trying to cook like eight thousand dishes at the same time, and perfectly time it, so that when everyone gets here at eight, the food’s all ready to go and hot and good and you can sit down and eat with your friends and be merry? Am I still supposed to clean as I go?” I was defiant. Martha Stewart would have been proud.

Nicolas didn’t answer, just sipped his tea quietly. I could tell that he hadn’t been impressed with my argument. I don’t know whom I thought I was kidding. Martha Stewart obviously cleans as she goes. My efforts to be the perfect host were being significantly undermined by the atrocity of the kitchen. I didn’t try to argue with Nicolas any further, vowing that I would do some dishes that afternoon. And I did. Some.

The dishes moratorium was born from fear of confrontation, and general fondness for passive aggression. Both of us convinced that we were getting the short end of the stick when it came to doing dishes in the apartment, Matt and I silently refused to do dishes. He waited to see how bad I would let it get. I waited to see how bad he would let it get. Neither of us wanted to break first, which wasn’t hard, since neither of us wanted to do any dishes anyway. As the piles grew higher, our refusal grew more rigid. But the Nico Tea Fiasco was enough to break me.

That afternoon, I placed the green cloth beneath the dish rack and set to work. And I chose my dishes carefully. As I lifted the dishes of Dinner Clubs past, I discovered mold. I pushed away instincts to go out in search of rubber gloves and rolled up my sleeves. I did the moldy dishes. It was a moment of roommate sacrifice—I swallowed my pride and my acid reflux.

Surprisingly enough, Matt didn’t follow suit. Instead, when I called him the following day, and hinted that there were still dishes to be done, he said, “I have a plan. But you have to come home so we can talk about it.” Come home so we can talk about it? Why? What was this plan, that I do all the dishes and he does nothing? I felt a dishes-related bad mood coming on.

When I got home, I found Matt sitting on his bed, waiting. I sat down, and in the most diplomatic language possible, he outlined the New Method. (The Old Method was that we weren’t allowed into the kitchen without putting in five minutes of cleaning time. The end result was that we both just avoided the kitchen at all costs and dishes piled up in our rooms.) He had come up with it over the course of the past weeks, and was ready to pitch it. I tried to cut his non-confrontational speak short several times, but this was a rehearsed speech. I listened and agreed to the following:

The New Method: Adventures in Apartment-Living as Outlined by Refusal of and Cooperation to do One’s Dishes
1. Each person living in the apartment must do his or her dishes within 24 hours of usage.
2. If one was to use a recently-used pot to cook one’s own dinner, this pot then becomes the responsibility of the most recent user, and therefore must be cleaned within the 24-hour window.
3. Dinner club dishes must be done by 2am the following night.
4. If one roommate cooks dinner for the other, the dishes fall to the responsibility of the non-cooking roommate.
5. No hiding dishes.
6. No dishes are allowed to linger in any space designated as public (tables, chairs, desks, floors, mantles, etc.), unless the dish was very recently used and the person has not gotten up yet.
7. General leniency for mugs, unless they start to grow mold.
8. Failure to comply with any of the above rules requires the negligent roommate to cook dinner for the other roommate, anything the latter desires, but rule #4 does not apply.
9. A second offense requires the negligent roommate to take the other to dinner.
10. A third offense requires the negligent roommate to do all dishes for one week, no matter the extravagance enjoyed by the second roommate during this time (roasted pig, six-course dinner, etc.).

The consequences of rules eight, nine and ten, have ensured, thus far, strict adherence to the rules. The kitchen is, as I type this, clean. Matt and I point out our crazy cleanliness to each other all the time. Each of us is informed when the other cleans up after him/herself. It’s a beautiful system. Feel free print these rules and use them in your own apartment.

Before me on the table is a Coke can, a water bottle, a plate, and a fork. But hey, I’m not getting up any time soon. Martha Stewart would be proud. Perhaps I’ll write her a letter in prison.