Relationship Court: Dishes

[Dave Gray]

He works from home for his own business.  He can pretty much set his own schedule, but essentially works a normal-ish workday.

He eats lunch during the day at home.  In an effort to not add to dirty dishes that realistically, she will end up doing, he cleans only the plate and utensils that he dirties in preparing  lunch and returns them to the appropriate drawers and cabinets.

Her view: He is being selfish by only taking care of himself and should either do the dishes or not do the dishes.  He takes breaks during the day and thus, has time to do them.

His view: He is being unselfish by not wanting to add to the problem.  However, it's important to set a distinction between a work environment and a home environment.  Even if he has break time to do dishes, does she do dishes during her work break?

[Sunstroke]

Going with her on this one...if you're making your own schedule working from home, you have time to wash a couple of extra dishes.

[Phishfan]

This one is a bit trickier than the others. I think it really depends on how many dishes we are talking about along with what is going on that particular day. Doing some extra dishes when the time is available wouldn't hurt him.

[CF DolFan]

My wife works from home so it's easier for her to throw clothes in the laundry etc. I will fold when i get home but the convenience of not having to get dressed and go somewhere should count for something.

as far as dishes ... our rule is one cooks the other cleans... unless it is something we made by ourselves. In that case we wash our own. 

[fyo]

Use a dishwasher... uses way less water, particularly if you only wash a dish or two at a time.

Problem solved .

(I'd probably go with "him", although doing it that way is just asking for trouble... if he sets aside a few minutes to perform what is essentially a household chore, I would pick something completely different, but very visible).

[Cathal]

Gotta go with her in this scenario. Yeah, he may clean up after himself after for lunch, but he is working from home. He's got time for some dishes.

[Dave Gray]

So, I'm the "him" in this story, and it goes back many, many years.  My wife and I still laugh about it.

I'm actually the most disturbed at my lack of support in this thread, over the others.  The reason is my mentality.

In order to work at home, I had to set rules for myself in order to be motivated to do my job.  One of those rules is that work is work.  I didn't allow myself chores during the day, because I was at work.  Work time was for work.  Once I opened the door for work time to be about chores, I feared that I wouldn't take it seriously and would give myself excuses to not work at work.

I no longer work from home, but if my current boss allowed me not to work, so I could go home and do stuff around the house, I would.  But he doesn't...for the same reason that I (the boss) didn't allow myself (the employee) to do chores on work time.

To be fair, the inconsistency came from me slapdicking at home, which I did regularly.  I took breaks when I was burned out or just didn't have it in me to work anymore, but I didn't take breaks from work just to do other work.

[Spider-Dan]

I actually had a roommate that would get mad at me for putting just my dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher, or emptying just my clean dishes from the dishwasher, instead of all of either.

To me, that logic was just bizarre.  From my perspective, if the situation were reversed, I would just be happy that my roommate took care of his own dishes!

[Tenshot13]

I actually had a roommate that would get mad at me for putting just my dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher, or emptying just my clean dishes from the dishwasher, instead of all of either.

To me, that logic was just bizarre.  From my perspective, if the situation were reversed, I would just be happy that my roommate took care of his own dishes!

+1.  I'm glad we agree on something 

[Pappy13]

I actually had a roommate that would get mad at me for putting just my dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher, or emptying just my clean dishes from the dishwasher, instead of all of either.

To me, that logic was just bizarre.  From my perspective, if the situation were reversed, I would just be happy that my roommate took care of his own dishes!

What you are not taking into consideration is that this behavior says that you are perfectly willing to either fill or empty the dishwasher, but only for YOUR dishes. That insinuates that your roommate is a slob or you don't make as many dishes as your roommate or something which even if it's true comes off as condescending and selfish. As a compromise you could have taken turns filling and emptying the dishwasher or one fills the other empties etc. My wife and I split the cooking and cleanup. If I cook, she cleans up and vice versa. Splitting up the chores is the way to go, not splitting a single chore into "mine" and "yours". That's ripe for a disagreement.

[Spider-Dan]

Ultimately it's not really comparable, as I wasn't sharing the cooking with my roommate.

edit: The real perspective you should take away from my actions is that I completely despise doing dishes and it takes a herculean effort of will just to do my own, much less someone else's.  The actual outcome from this discussion (at the time) was that I started using more disposable dishes (paper plates, etc.).

[pondwater]

I wouldn't expect that anyone I live with to just throw their dirty dishes in the sink. I don't mind running the dishwasher, emptying it, and putting away the dishes. But they damn well better rinse off their plate and put it neatly in the dishwasher, as will I. It literally takes 10 seconds to rinse off you dish and put it in the dishwasher. I don't know how people can leave a sink full of dirty dishes, that's just lazy and nasty.

[masterfins]

I'm on his side.  He shouldn't be required to do the dishes every day just because he works from home.  He is at least not adding to the accumulation of dirty dishes expecting her to do them later.  (Personally, I'm a big paper plate guy because I hate doing dishes.)  I had a similar situation with an Ex of mine where she had to be at work 1 1/2 hours before me so I was usually getting out of bed when she was leaving.  Hence, in her eyes it was my duty to make the bed everyday, along with replacing the unneeded 6 decorative throw pillows on the bed.  Being single before, and currently, I never saw the need to make the bed.  Needless to say this stupid activity led to more than one disagreement when I just didn't feel like doing it, or was running late for work.  Mind you I know when we were living apart she didn't make her bed everyday, it's just one of those things that women want to be able to gripe over.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The issue isn't the time of day it his lack of doing dishes from family meals. If he did some dishes in the evening or after breakfast before going to work or before dinner after work she wouldn't be bitching that he won't do dishes during work hours.

[Dolphster]

Going with her on this one...if you're making your own schedule working from home, you have time to wash a couple of extra dishes.

I'm with you.  If dude is working from home and essentially on his own schedule, he should be bearing a little heavier load on the home chores.