Sunday, July 31, 2011

Rinse your Plate

As part of a family with seven member we go through a lot dishes and everything else for that matter. Five of the members of our house are over 10. About a year ago I introduced reminder cards around the house. The one above the kitchen sink is the reminder card to rinse your plate. I thought it was a good idea.

Today my kids had me take them to the pool like I do most days. However today I was in some bad pain. Around 5ish my hubs called and asked what we should do about dinner. Our second oldest just got back to us for a vacation in Europe with her Mom and told me she was making Beef Stroganoff. (Hamburger Helper). I assumed she and hubs decided on that. Silly me she thought it was in stone and he thought it was small talk. However my hubs is awesome and went out and got everything needed to make it as well as a few more dinners for the week.

I came home with the kids and sat down. Hubs came home and saw our sink was full of nasty dishes from the day. I came in to help and saw my reminder card, thought about how nasty the sink could be and decided today my 10 and ups would learn to do the dishes.

First they loaded our dishwasher without rinsing. Can't do that. You need to rinse. Every dish had to come back out and rinsed off. They loaded the dishwasher and left all the used pots and pans in the sink.

This is where it got fun. I showed them how to scrub.After all I have been doing this everyday of their entire lives and before. They cried and yelled. I got told how unfair this was and nasty. I couldn't help but laugh and say you know you're right. Went on to explain it's so much easier to do dishes in a sink where the dishes are already rinsed.

I guess I'm kind of a mean Mom since their complaints made me smile. All I can think of was I was about this age when I started helping out. Our dishwasher never worked and I can remember being in the kitchen with my sisters and  working a line. Someone washed, someone rinsed and someone dried and this wasn't once in a while this was our life.

My kids have it easy. I do most of what needs to be done. I just think going into fifth grade they need to do a little too. This I am excited about.




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