Well, the first thing that ran across my mind was guilt. How many times did I not do dishes when living with my parents, or previous roommates? Clearly this was karma manifested - a yellowing sink with 2-week-old dishes hosting their own ecosystem of bacteria, mold and my personal favourite- ants.
So that's the lesson then. Karma. What goes around comes around. Surely now that I've come to this earth shattering realization, the dishes would get done. Oh wait. They're not going anywhere. They're going to be there now, some more and ...somemore.
God knows why I have chosen to actually start caring about dishes at
this point in my life. I mean, I was pretty apathetic towards them till
now. Now, the sight of a unkept sink piled ridiculously high with
moldy dishes made me irate. Workplace
altercations - no problem! Solve it with a little bit of "a gentle
answer turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1)" Societal pressures about
singlehood in mid-twenties? Ha! I'll chase contentment more than a
checklist manifesto for my life that "requires" marriage. Water off a
duck's back, as Americans
like to say. Motivating a team of acquaintances to put an event
together? Motivational leadership to the rescue! Send out emails, and
wait on god to work on their hearts and the event.
Neglected dirty dishes? I'm at a loss. I
can't even fathom why I felt such annoyance at such a trivial household
chore not getting done. I avoided doing them most of my life because I felt that females who did any household chores were succumbing to the secret agenda of the "women-belong-in-the-kitchen"ites. I woke up from that erroneous approach by understanding that doing chores around the house is not a gendered activity- it's an activity in being CONSIDERATE to those who live with you.
Consideration may seem like a vague term to some. Possibly if that wasn't instilled in your K-12 education like in India and Singapore. So for those who did not get this concept of thinking of others while growing up, ponder these three levels of consideration regarding the common sink area:
Level 1. Doing your own dishes. Good job! You didn't break any plates so your roommates trust you! You go on to...
Level 2. Doing house dishes on some sort of rotation. Alright! Great system guys, sink harmony makes the house a loved and respected place for each other. You should ideally land here
BUT WAIT WHAT'S HAPPENING!!! THERE'S...
Most coveted Level 3. Doing house dishes for months in a row. No end in sight.
Tis a rude shock to move into the third level when the first and second levels seem pretty comfortable to one's sense of shared duty and respect towards the house.
Months ago, I took the approach of putting up a sign that I thought would signal humour and wit to my roommates about the dishes not getting done,
"Tired of your maidservice? Then it's time to do the dishes!" Felt pretty clever- using humour to inspire some light-hearted dish washing fun.
It had short-term success, but was not a sustainable way to keep the dishes from piling up and welcoming insects into the kitchen. Clearly sign's message did not stick to their brains long enough, or as a priority, for them to wash the crumbs and saliva off their own plates. I've lead several projects in academic and not-for-profit settings and have spent six years actively seeking out different means to motivate a team of reluctant members to get on the same page and work towards challenging goals. Why was I not taking the same approach here? Because this was far more challenging as my leadership goal - it involved motivating friends who are close to me to get on common ground and finish a mundane and non-urgent task. It's not karma that I'm supposed to get out of this situation, it's a lesson in motivating others through a personally frustrating scenario/ a seemingly trivial gripe. Yes, this is my academic treatment of an oddly irritating problem. Really, I'm just as surprised as you are that I actually care about washing dishes.
Given above background and preliminary data, I am going on a classic bottom-up, discovery-driven fishing expedition to keep the sink free of dirty dishes for two days out of the week.
Experimental design
Aim 1: Gently drop hints about cleaning dishes on a regular basis to promote Level 1 consideration where each of us washes our own dishes. Methods will be verbal, as visual methods from preliminary experiment did not work in the long run.
Aim 2: Play
1000 blank white cards, but switch out all cards to "wash dishes." Rationale is that most of the house loves playing nerdy board games.
Aim 3: Announce a party that will gather roommates, focus on how living together has been beneficial while slowly moving towards sink. Turn on music and then point out that since we're all here, we should do dishes.
Evaluation of results
Same for all aims. Frequency per week of clean sink (two days) and volume of sink that is clean (e.g. sink is less than 50% full of dirty dishes) when
roommates clean their own or others' dishes. As the control, I will be washing all of my own dishes, but not of others (reverting to level 1 consideration). Timeline before Aims are evaluated: next three weeks, before we get a new roommate.
Alternate approach and strategies
If none of the aims proposed are viable, this blog post is a mechanism to get external ideas on motivating a team. In the case of observer's effect (i.e. the roommates read this post), us suffering intellectuals will be able to actually treat the matter with some sort of importance by discussing it for a change.
Feedback on background, absent hypothesis, and experimental design is welcome.
