I think the state of one's kitchen says much about a person. I followed the FlyLady method of keeping house and her number one rule is clean your kitchen sink...which of course means clean the sink of dishes and then shine the sink. At our house the state of the kitchen sink is all over the map. Sometimes is good, many times it is pityfull and many more times it is somewhere in between.

I have tried the "never go to bed with dishes in the sink" method. I got mad because I was spending my before bed minutes picking up the kid's dishes! So then I went to bugging each person to put their own dishes in the dishwasher, I would hunt them down no matter what they were doing if I found dishes sitting around. My son got the hang of it and put my daughter and myself to shame! I tried hanging a reminder note on the kitchen window..."Never leave dishes in the Sink".

Well, I am at it again. Now we are going to charge ourselves $1 anytime we leave dishes out. We have tried to think of all the ins and outs. For example, if the dishwasher is full and clean...you can either unload it or wash your dish by hand.

I was so tempted today to leave dishes in the sink because I didn't want to take the time to unload clean dishes, I wanted to catch a nap before I had to play mom's taxi. I resisted and unloaded...took all of 4 minutes!

I have to keep remembering how good it feels to walk into a kitchen that is picked up. My life seems just a little bit more in control when my kitchen is free of dirty dishes. Control what I can control because heaven knows there is so much I can't control!