In our house, Lauren does most of the cooking and I handle most of the clean up. I load the dishwasher, handwash the pots, pans and utensils and I try to dry and put most of the stuff away. It is the putting stuff away that always causes me problems.
Every so often my wife will reorganize the cabinets. She will move the plastic storage containers from one cabinet to another. The colander and strainers will find a new home somewhere else. Everything will get stacked nice and neat on shelves. Whenever she does this, it takes me weeks to figure out where everything is supposed to go in their new spot. If she is not in the kitchen when I am trying to figure her new system out, 9 out of 10 times, I put the item away in the old spot. Lauren does not like this.
Lauren, also, will take the largest bowls and put them on a shelf and stack all the smaller bowls inside to create more room for other items. We have a set of three, blue, mixing bowls. They stack neatly inside one another. We use the middle sized one the most often. When Lauren needs to get that bowl she has to take all three out of the cabinet, remove the smaller one from inside the middle one, remove the middle one form the large one and then put the little one back into the largest one and put them back into the cabinet. It is many steps.
When I am cleaning up, I will put away the middle sized bowl on top of the small bowl, like a reverse pyramid, because I know that the middle bowl is the one we use most so it is the easiest to grab. I think it is more efficient. A while ago, Lauren asked me to stack them the correct way. I told her of my reasoning and her response was, “You hate organization, don’t you?”
It is not that I hate organization; it is just that her system for the kitchen cabinets for cooking is totally against my system for the kitchen cabinets for putting stuff away.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
19 comments:
Do you teach lessons on doing dishes? Because my hubby is pretty good about it, but he always washes the pots and pans in the dishwasher. I don't say anything, because, hey, he's doing dishes. But still...
For once I am going to side with you Bill. I think your way makes sense. It is organized! And if Lauren is going to keep moving stuff around, she can't really get mad at you for not knowing where the stuff goes.
JMHO.
I am you and K is your wife.
Where do you put your apron when you are all done?
If the bowls are visible, then Lauren's right, they have to be nested. But if they can't be seen, then I'm all for efficiency. I'm just sayin'.
I consider the kitchen my domain. I unpacked it and decided where everything should go when we moved in. I do 95% of the cooking and 80% of the cleaning up. I am now discovering that whenever my husband happens to be home sick for a couple of days, he'll come across something that he thinks needs reorganizing. Things get moved around, and then I am forced to yell.
The solution? He must never be sick. Ever.
I'd just be thrilled to not find the stuff sitting on top of the counter. But - since L did go thru the trouble of setting up a system, you should go along with it. Remember, she is the boss of you.
I agree with you as well. It would make me nuts if someone kept rearranging the kitchen cabinets. Maybe you should just open all the cabinet doors before you start putting everything away?
i nest my bowls like lauren. though it does annoy me that the middle bowl isn't easily accessible. but i suffer through the annoyance which is probably a little crazy because nobody can see them anyway so it would make no difference whether they are stacked neatly or not!
After 4058122874155 arguments about PUTTING STUFF AWAY WHERE IT BELONGS FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY... HE washes, I put away dishes.
Much nicer in the household now
Poor little William has to lift a small bowl to put the medium bowl in after his wife cooks him a lovely meal? Awwww! JUST KIDDING! It's only because I have OCD and am anal retentive that I side with Lauren. I like things where they belong - and I'M the one who gets to say where they belong. It's a disease.
I understand. Completely. I'm frequently told that I load the dishwasher incorrectly. I didn't realize there were rules.
Everyone has their own rules apparently. I need to nest the bowls whether anyone else can see them or not...if I don't I'LL know that they're wrong in the cabinet.
I don't understand why pots and pans can't go in the dishwasher though. We have some that need to be washed by hand and others that can go in...I'm not sure what the difference is. I also get spoken to about putting things into the dishwasher wrong...I can't figure that one out either.
I am a MAJOR reorganizer and rearranger and used to drive my exhusband batty because he could never find stuff!! It must be very common, just with two people living together in general. How funny!
It's even worse at our house because both of my daughters and my hub taketurns on different nights putting the dishes away.
Problem is, they put everything anywhere...into any cabinet they can find.
So I can see how you'd be confused if the stuff is rearranged from time to time. Although, I suspect maybe Lauren is just looking for a better way to organize it all, LOL.
And the many steps to get out the mixing bowl? I'm with you on that one!
We just finished a kitchen remodeling and in the beginning, my girls and hub didn't know which cabinet was supposed to hold what item, except for obvious things like plates and glasses.
I could never find a what I was looking for when I went to cook because they didn't put it back where it was supposed to go.
Finally I resorted to labeling some of the shelves, not all of them, so they'd know where the mixing bowls go and where the pyrex dishes went, etc.
I couldn't figure out why my plan wasn't working until I discovered that none of them knew what the word pyrex meant and they couldnt tell the difference between the "serving bowls" and the mixing bowls" Hub thought they all looked alike even though they are OBVIOUSLY different.
my god, what a learning curve. I have failed my kids. hubs learning.
and i'm still looking for the friggin egg beater.
Take the mixing bowls out of the cabinet and fill them with potpourri (sadly, i sense i don't need to explain to you what potpourri is) Then put them out on a table somewhere & tell Lauren you saw a display just like it in the Pottery Barn Home catalog (something tells me this may actually be believable coming from you) Then tell her that you read an article in Parenting magazine that cited an important study which concluded that kids who eat take-out food throughout their youth score an average of 100 points higher on their SATs than those who eat home-cooked food. Then, pick up the phone and order in. How you did not figure this out on your own, i do not know.
You can come do dishes in my kitchen. The colander is stored in the same place for all 23 years we have lived here. Actually, it's the same colander we were given as a wedding shower gift.
And the bowls are stacked in a way that looks odd, but most used is most convenient.
And pans are allowed in the dishwasher machine.
Yeah, you'd fit right in here.
Ok. Stupid question. Does Lauren buy the dumpling wrappers? And if so, where does she get them?
We have the same problem here. The hubs got tired of it and just puts the stuff on the counter so I can put it away. At least he washes and dries it!
Post a Comment