I'm going to give you a riddle.
A dish washing riddle.
It goes a little something like this...
One day a certifiably crazy family takes their four messy children to an even messier country. Upon arriving to the new house the children quickly start licking cups and smashing rice all over plates.
The mother decides it's time to wash the dishes, because we all know that's what a good mother would decide. Actually the mother takes a good look at the pile of dishes, assesses the situation, and then wishes she is Mary Poppins or that genies are real and can be found in Haiti. I would totally waste all three of my wishes on housework. I really would.
Once she comes to grips with the fact that she's no Julie Andrews, and she admits that genies are always a little creepy she goes to the sink and here's what she finds...
A one-sided sink.
No hot water.
No dishwasher.
She's been told that she needs to add Clorox to the water when she washes the dishes because there are crazy parasitic bugs in the water. When ingested those parasites cause a tornado to come out of your hiney.
The mission: She must figure out how to clean the dishes AND conserve as much water as possible. Water doesn't grow on trees here.
Before I give you our answer to this riddle, I thought it would be fun to hear your ideas. It would even be more fun if some of you washed a big batch of your own dishes this way. Use one side of your sink. No hot water out of the spout. No dishwasher. And what about the buggy water?
Maybe one of you domestic diva geniuses will come up with a better idea than we have. That's why I don't want to tell you about our dish washing system...I don't want to ruin your creativity.
I will tell you on Monday about the process we've come up with...and boy is it a process. I know. How will you survive the weekend with such a cliffhanger in your life?
Until then...if you wash a big batch of your own dishes like this (even try to do the pots and pans) and post pictures on your blog, I will link to it. Or you could send me a picture for my own enjoyment. Or you could send no picture, but dang it if you come up with a hot system for getting dishes clean with these elements in place, you better send me your idea.
You can live a day in the life of a missionary in Haiti right in your own kitchen. I think we'll be bonded for life.
Who is up for the challenge?
34 comments:
I live in an apartment with a one-sided sink and no dishwasher. I wash all my dishes like this (though the municipal water here is, ostensibly, safe).
I fill the sink with hot soapy water, let the dishes soak a bit so I don't have to scrub, wash them with a dishcloth, and rinse them in a basin-- I use a roaster pan because that's what I have, but it's a bit small for some pots and pans, so you might want something larger. Then I let them airdry in the dish drainer.
I'm not sure what to suggest about the bleach-- my environmentalist instincts are to make sure it's rinsed off, but then if you rinse it off in buggy water...?
I also recommend recruiting spouses and children for this task whenever possible!
This is what I would do, hope it helps!
Soak all the dirty dishes in regular water (no clorox) and scrub all the food off. Dry the dishes off to get dirty water off. Get a large plastic container with clean (cloroxed) water and do the final rinsing there. Get a large pot and place all ur dishes inside with an inch or two of water and steam them to get off any extra germs/bacteria/etc off. Dry and done! Depending on how many dishes, you have only spent the water it took to fill the sink and the water it took to do the final rinse plus the steaming water. Hope that helps!!!!!
BTW, love your blog and can't express my amazement at what you are doing. So wonderful. Can't imagine what its like but can only say that you are making a difference in someone's life by being there.....hope you and your family stay safe.....
i'm game.
i've got a small pile of dishes at my sink right now that could easily compete with a family of six.
josh is in class tonight, so i'll definitely see what i can come up with.
pictures to come!
Heather,
Consider this, once or twice a week, instead of using plates, get a big skillet or serving plate, huddle closer together as a family, eat with your forks from the skillet or plate. Maybe if the food needs bread to compliment it, how about make the bread the fork?
This would be good if you don't have company over and as you can see, saves washing dishes and silverware.
Paul
I think I'd begin planning VERY CAREFULLY how and what I cooked!! :) I'd make sure that everyone used a towel of some sort to 'wipe clean' every plate before sort of 'rinsing' them off. I would probably 'color code' the plates so that each person stuck (hehe) to their own plate/dish. I remember camping and washing dishes in this manner. What about a diet of SANDWICHES and 'finger foods'???? hehe
Enjoying your blog....I'll be waiting for your solution!
How about this problem? You live in a country, house, church that has hot water but Mexican (these would be citizens of Mexico, not an epithet) house help and members refuse to use hot water for washing dishes. The dish soap all says "works great in cold water."
One trick for your dilemma is a drain rack with a rubber mat under it that drains back into the sink.
Poppi
When we had no dishwasher, I dealt with something similar (although we did have hot water). If I were you, I'd do this:
Start a pot of water to boil on the stove. Fill the sink with water. Clean the dishes in the cold water in sink. Mix the boiling water with a little cold until you're hands can handle it. Add the bleach. Soak the newly cleaned dishes for 15 sec (of whatever time you were told to kill the germs). Dry. It's a LONG process, but the simpliest I could come up with when in a similar situation! I'll be praying for you!
Louise E.
I like all the ideas here.
I would probably scrub the food off in the sink with the cold water with soap. Then have boiling water on whatever you have to cook on, and boil the dishes for germs. As far as the clorox, I don't know what to say there. Normally, I would abstain, but when it comes to parasites.............
Here's my solution:
Fill a black or dark colored close-able container with water, in anticipation of washing dishes. Put in the requisite bug-killing clorox, and put the container out in the sun. When you are ready to wash dishes, you will have hot water.
Put a large pot, bowl or basin in the sink, fill it with the hot water and wash the dishes in this basin, stacking them outside the basin in the sink, or on the counter. Pre-soaking might be useful.
When you're done washing them, rinse them quickly with water from the tap, avoiding using too much water, to get the soap off.
After rinsing, using your basin again, fill it with more of the hot water from the black container, and run each dish through the treated hot water in the basin in order to kill the bugs from the rinse.
When it's not sunny, your water in the black container will at least be room temperature.
God bless!
Have you considered boiling water in which to wash dishes? Then you (should) have bug-free hot water.
I have a headache just thinking about this sister friend. Oh my gracious!
I get stuck at the "rinsing" part because you DON'T want to rinse with "buggy" water, but you also don't want to leave BLEACH on your plates, cups, and utensils for Pete's sake.
i like the idea of boiling water to rinse the dishes in, but i know that would require a BIG pot and extra time. Let's be honest- 4 boys make a lot of dishes.
i can't wait to hear what you've come up with because I just can't wrap my brain around this one!
Very rarely am I thankful while doing dishes at my one-sided sink with the faucet held up by a twisty-tie, but today you had me very thankful for my hot water :) Something I have seen a lot of people here in Belgium do for rinsing is using a big plastic container. They just pull it out and fill it with water whenever it's time to do the dishes and rinse in it like normal. I have no idea what to do about parasites. While in the D.R. we used grapefruit seed extract in the rinse watter to kill parasites but I heard later that it wasn't very efficient and people kept getting sick. Can't wait to hear your solution!
Ask Soso how she conserves water and copy her. :)
To wash: There might be a paste-like soap in Haiti which can be used to scrub dishes without using a lot of water. Otherwise, wash in cold water in your sink.
To rinse/disinfect: Boil water on the stove and use a large bowl for rinsing dishes. In theory boiling should kill the parasites in the water, but since you're new to Haiti's germs, some bleach might be good. (Or whatever you use to wash your fruits and vegetables.)
And enlist the help of your energetic boys to wash dishes!
Do you clean your produce with bleach water? In Mexico we use Microdyn, which is iodine based. Or some folks use a colloidal silver solution. I don't know which is safest to digest. Just know I'd rather have bleach than bugs.
i would go with boiling water in a big pot to kill parasites if you have means to do that.
run forks/utensils over dishes into the trash can to take off excess food.
then dip out a bit of the boiled water into a bowl for your sponge. lather your sponge(put soap right on sponge) with soap and clean off dishes then use remaining boiled water to rinse off dishes.
then you might could use a little bleach to pour over your sponge to disinfect it.
jana slaughter- cant wait to hear what you ARE doing. blessings to yall
@ Robert B. Heath-- I'm not sure that heating the chlorine water would be a good idea. Depending on how hot it got, the chlorine could start to decompose into some nasty components.
I'll be keeping an eye on the comments since we are heading in 2 weeks to live in a dry cabin for at least the next year. When we stayed with our friends there we'd heat up water on the stove, put half into one of those plastic basins I got from a hospital visit, wash dishes in it and stack in the sink, then used a ladle to scoop water from the other half of the heated water over the dishes to rinse. Not sure how I'd handle the buggies in the water though!
When I spent two months in Nepal, we had to heat all of our water for washing, and it took forever! We quickly learned to conserve our dishes as much as we could, but we were just three single girls.
Anyway, in trying to remember what we did, and remembering my years working in food service (yes, all 6 of them), I think I would get a large tub and fill it with tap water to presoak/get the food off of all the dishes. Then heat a pot of water to make hot water in the sink. Add dish soap. Move dishes from cold food water to hot dish soap water, then dip in a third tub of clorox water. That's how we washed and rinsed dishes in the restaurant and didn't have running water all the time, just three sinks. You could use tubs. We had the clorox water hot in the restaurants I worked in.
Soak in cold food water. Scrub in hot soapy water. Rinse in clorox water. Dry. The end.
When I was in Haiti we just used the same kind of sink and added dishsoap and 'washed' the dishes and then had a seperate tub (like an emesis basis) on the counter with water and small amount of bleach and we rinsed them in that and then placed them on the counter, or on a drying rack. Good luck! The bleach really does work you just have to let the dishes actually dry before use. :) I think I would have been paranoid and boiling my water on the stove but I came back with no parasites from there or China so there must be something to it!
You lost me with a tornado in your hiney! You poor thing! I think we should ship you lots of paper products!
I like Paul's solution. Or just get everyone feeding tubes and do a liquid diet.
I have hot water, a dishwasher, and no bugs in the water and still I can't get motivated to do the mound of dishes in my sink....can't wait to hear your solution.
Boiling tons of water sounds like it would take awhile and use too much water. I'm thinking you could just wash with cold water and dish soap. Then, what about heating your dishes to kill whatever might be on them? Brings me back to Chem101. I'm picturing beakers and bunsen burners. If you had a heat source and your dishes could tolerate it, I think it could work.
The tornado in your hiney is a true story. And I think you just helped me figure out how I got sick. They were careful with the food, but not the dishes...
If you are worried about ingesting bleach try something iodine based. When I was there I used Betadine to make drinking water (the water looked brownish from the iodine, but it was drinkable.)30 ml of Betadine is enough to disinfect 150 liters of water. I had it from our medical supplies which I took to Haiti on our trip, but I don't know how available it is down there.
We only had one sink when we lived in Europe....but we did have hot water! I'd invest in paper products. If you don't like that idea, I'd boil water on the stove, get a rubber-maid tub (or any big tub), and then I'd do this process:
scrape plates clean. wash in soapy cold water. Put boiled water into extra tub and add clorax. Rinse dishes in the hot/clorax water. Then, depending on what the Haitians advise about the clorax water, maybe rinse again in cold water. If you don't have to re-rinse in cold, they will probably dry well from the hot water.
You will look back at this as a great adventure and see how big God is in all of it! I love your attitude - you're miles ahead of many people, including me!
Okay, never thought 23 people would have an opinion on how to wash dishes. And honestly, not going to read them all......so if I am repeating someone else. SORRY!
From my nursing background I can tell you that friction kills germs, not hot water. So I wouldn't hurt yourself boiling water to wash dishes.
Secondly, from our San Diego birthed the ministry "Give Clean Water" (do you need a water filter to get the bugs out? I am happy to buy you one and send it)
Third.... if you have some type of spray bottle (or again, I can send you one) you could mix bleach with boiled "clean" water and just "spray" your dishes after they have been washed. Once the bleach water dries, it's not harmful to you. Again, nursing experience, use bleach water a lot and no natural disasters coming out the hind-end parts.
LOVE YOU!
Ok call me crazy, but I say fix the water. I mean forget about this whole chlorine/boiling water/iodine business. UV kills almost everything, and you can get a unit to disinfect ALL of the water coming into your house for around $500.
Then you just fill up the sink, soak the dishes, scrub them, and fill up a basin to rinse them in. 2 sinks of water - no chlorine.
I'll mail you one.
This won't quite be fair- but when we lived in Africa- we used rain water (and of course it wasn't safe). We didn't treat water we washed with. We got hot water from a solar heater outside with a jerry can (but occasionally boiled a kettle and added to it for comfort if desired).
To deal with the bad water- we let everything air dry and never use anythign with so much as a speck of water on it. I'm sure if desired you can put in some bleach when washing.
We got a plastic tub and put in the sink to wash all- then you can rinse while washing and lay out to dry.
That's how we did it!
I'm interested to see how you do it!
okay, that melda is one smart cookie and nice too!
love her brain.
p.s. I've been checking back like crazy waiting for either an update and/or to read all of the comments bc for some reason this is truly fascinating to me!
Wow, lots of comments about dishwashing. Didn't read them all of them.
Fill the sink up with half the water that you would normally use to wash (in order to conserve water). Clean the dishes as normal. Even though the water is cold the friction and dishsoap will kill germs/bacteria. Then, place the dishes in a rack or on a towel next to the sink. Drain the dirty water. Refill the sink half way again with water. Spray or put in your drops of bleach. Let your "clean" dishes sit in the clorox water for a moment to "rinse" and then put them in the drying rack to dry. This will kill the parasites and the bleach will not harm you at all once it has air dried. Worked for me in Nicaragua...and we often had only cold, parasite full H20.
Heather,
Hi. I've never commented on your post before, but Megan and I were talking about your post yesterday and she encouraged me to write you.
(I'm the one that wrote this post she told you about - http://threetoone-321.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-kind-of-soldier-am-i.html)
I spent two years in the Peace Corps in a third-world country where we, too, couldn't drink the water, didn't have hot water unless we heated it - which in summertime just didn't make sense - and didn't even have a sink. We had to get all our water from a well and used a couple big, shallow bowls to wash everything in (and I do mean everything. That's even how I had to bathe, believe it or not - no tub or shower either!) . However, even though all the dishes were washed in cold water, I never got sick from the "bugs." Don't stress too much about the fact that you're washing them in cold water. What you want to be most concerned about is killing the germs. Did you know white vinegar is great for that? Maybe you could wash them all in cold water to get all the food off, then have a bucket of vinegar next to the sink that you could dip everything in. You want to make sure you let them air dry - the vinegar will kill more that way - instead of wiping them. I also use white vinegar to clean my house with - kitchen counters, toilets, etc. - because it kills all that bacteria and is safe for my kiddos. Hope it helps!
Beth
I haven't read all the comments but I am visiting friends with one sided sink who lived in NZ and have no dish washer... we agree on this plan...
boil water and fill the sink with all the dishes and let them soak overnight or for a while (depending on the meal).
Then first thing in the morning or before the next meal, I would then boil more water and while it was boiling I would scrub everything and then pour the boiled water over it for a rinse.
Instead of bleach I would find something like vinegar, grapefruit seed extract etc to combat the bacteria/parasite thing (if you didn't want to boil water three or more times a day).
love you guys and praying for you... my husband just finished the book and I am half way... can't wait to see how our hearts are lead too.
I think hot water is overated and I wouldn't worry about boiling, etc. Here's what I would do:
-use 3 plastic tubs and your sink fill them with water
-let the first tub be where you get the crud off the plates (you could skip this one if you don't mind having food crud in your soapy water, but that really bothers me!)
-put soap in the second tub and wash the plates there
-in the third tub rinse the soap off the plates
-then have the sink filled with water containing clorox and let the plates sit there for about 10 minutes just to make sure the bugs die.
-get a drying rack or two and pile them high with dishes
Wash cups, utensils, and that which is least dirty first and do plates and pots last.
If you have a pot with stuff stuck to it put some water in it and boil it until the hard stuff begins to loosen and come off.
Charles and John Wesley's mom had a rule. After the kids have learned how to read they are ready to be put to work in the home. I'd utilize those little helping hands you have in your house and make dish time family fun, because that's a lot of dishes. :)
Sorry, not up for the challenge. But you could boil water on the stove to use? Maybe that would kill some parasites. I've also read that Grape Seed Extract kills parasites. You can put it in your dish water instead of bleach.
Found out about your blog from either Ruth or Katie & Ben, and figured I might as well comment on this one. :^)
I have a single sink - I chose that. I fill my biggest dish with soapy water instead of filling the sink. And I know from reading that air drying is much better for avoiding germs than wiping dry with a cloth (b/c the cloth will transfer anything from one dish to the next). Find/build a drying rack.
What i don't have experience with is parasite infested water! I should think that bleach is the way to go - the air drying will dissipate any bleach residue.
Say hi to Ruth H for me. :^)
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