Willow & Sage Counseling

I leave dishes in the sink overnight. You heard me right. I leave the dishes in the sink overnight.  I don’t wipe down the countertops or the stove. At most I might leave a pot or pan in the sink to soak. But other than that, after I have finished eating dinner, I turn my back on my kitchen and I spend the evening relaxing and getting ready for bed. More shocking than this revelation is the fact that most weekends, the dishes stay in the sink and the kitchen isn’t cleaned for the ENTIRE WEEKEND! Now, don’t get this twisted. My kitchen isn’t filthy. There aren’t cultures of penicillin growing off some moldy food, and my application to the show Hoarders would hands down be rejected. No, no. Those dishes get washed, and the kitchen gets cleaned, the next morning, or in the case of the weekend, on Monday.  

Often when I admit this little tidbit about myself, I am met with phrases like, “I can’t even sleep if I know that there are dishes in the sink”, or “I’m too worried about getting bugs to leave dishes in the sink overnight”. Conventional wisdom says that you SHOULDN’T leave dishes in the sink… ever! Public health officials publish multiple articles every year about the health benefits of keeping a clean home, and what household products are safe and not safe to use. Every advertisement, from print ads to those annoying videos you’re forced to watch BEFORE the YouTube video you really want to see, tells you that you should buy their product so you have no excuses. Social pressures, compounded by sites like Pinterest or Instagram, show you how to clean your house so well that your kid can lick every surface and not get sick (although, there’s another video out there that will tell you NOT to let your kid lick everything, but I digress).  Experts in the mental health field might tell you that leaving dishes in the sink could be a sign of depression, ADHD, poor coping skills, or an inability to manage stress, and that leaving dishes in the sink is a cause for concern and possibly the need for medication or therapy. And let’s not forget the one friend whose house is always immaculate despite the fact that they have a full time job, two kids, a dog, a cat, and serve as the president of their kids’ PTO. Who amongst us hasn’t felt a pang of shame walking into THAT house?

Shame is a son of a bitch. Just ask any Latino and they’ll gladly tell you how their parents, especially their mother, guilted and shamed them into behaving a certain way, into making certain decisions, and into relinquishing any boundaries they wanted to have. Or you can ask any Catholic.. that’ll work too. For years I tried to shame myself into changing my behavior regarding the dishes. I told myself I was lazy and that it wasn’t that hard to clean the dishes right after dinner. I told myself I needed to be more disciplined, and that because I wasn’t, I was somehow deficient. The question “what the hell is wrong with me?” ran in a loop in my brain, like the stock market ticker tape. I’d beam with pride when I was able to clean the kitchen right after dinner, and I’d think, “I’ve finally got this!” only to go right back to shaming myself once I slipped back into my old habits. 

I’ve heard it takes 30 days to create a new habit. Thirty days of habitually engaging in the new habit and it will be a new habit for life. That’s a bunch of horse shit in my opinion. Years ago, I decided not to eat chocolate as my New Year’s resolution. I made it through the year and a little beyond that. Do I eat chocolate now? You bet your ass I do! Did I feel shame at the first bite of chocolate after the year was over? As strong as the sting of my mother’s chancla!

So, for years, decades even, I shamed myself. I didn’t realize that that was what I was doing. But I did. My shame might have brought about momentary changes in behavior, but when I reverted back to leaving the dishes in the sink, my shame compounded. I was disappointed in myself, sometimes even disgusted. Then one morning, as I was standing at my sink, clearing away the previous night’s evidence, I realized that I wasn’t built to clean up after dinner, and that it was OK because I did end up cleaning up eventually. I realized that I had taken on other people’s expectations or ideas, made them my own, expected myself to live up to them, and never once questioned whether it was right for me. Does it really matter if the dishes are left overnight or through the weekend? Who does it hurt? How does it negatively impact my life or the world at large? There’s no Kitchen Clean Up Brigade that makes unannounced visits to people’s homes to enforce these arbitrary rules. Why, then, was I beating myself up about this?

The rejection of external narratives was difficult to do at first. I had subscribed to them my entire adult life. But once I decided to do it, it felt so relieving and liberating. I even took it a step further and declined to stop apologizing to any friends who saw dishes in my sink. Those are MY dishes in MY house. I can do what I want! If my friend has a problem with it, they don’t have to stay. And you know what? Not a single friend has ever had an issue with my messy kitchen. 

Now the question that I ask myself every time I am struggling to adopt a new habit or to evict an old one out of my life is, “Am I built for that?” Am I built to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to exercise before I start my day? Hell to the no. Am I built to fold my laundry and put it away immediately after they’re finished drying? Oh, God, no. Sometimes I’m lucky to put the clothes away before I need to do laundry again. Am I built to empty the Roomba’s incredibly small dustbin every time it tells me to? Nope. Sometimes that blinking light haunts me for a couple of weeks before I do it. Is my life falling apart because I don’t try to change these things and “do better”? Also a big fat nope. My life is fine, great even! Sure, I’d love to workout more and have a more organized house; but, just because I don’t doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me.  

Look, sometimes struggling to do things, or not to do things, is a real issue. Can’t get out of bed because of depression? That’s a real issue. You haven’t done laundry in months and you’re wearing dirty clothes every day? That’s a real issue. Binge eating has become your way of coping? That’s a real issue. But what isn’t an issue are these little things that we beat ourselves up over that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I know I’m not going to be on my deathbed, wishing I had spent more time making sure that my underwear was neatly folded and put away in a drawer after every laundry day. Nor am I going to wish I had spent more time mopping, or making sure the beds are made every morning. And I doubt you will either.