dirty dishes

Dirty Dishes is a quiet reflection on the work that keeps a household running — the kind of work that rarely gets named, praised, or noticed.

In this episode of Notes, Kathy stands at the kitchen sink during the middle of the day and thinks about dishes, laundry, caretaking, and the invisible labor that shapes a child’s sense of home. Through small, familiar moments — a dishwasher hum, a Thin Mint, sunlight on clean countertops — she traces how ordinary chores become signals of stability, safety, and care.

This is an episode about maintenance, motherhood, and the quiet systems that hold everything together — even when they look like nothing from the outside.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

 "And somewhere along the way I realized these are not nothing tasks. This is the work of keeping a household clean and fed for a small human who can't do any of it herself yet. "

 You are listening to Notes with Kathy Patalsky. What happens when the most ordinary mess says the most about your life.

 Dirty Dishes.

I'm standing at the sink in the middle of the day, peeling dishes out from under running water last night's 10:00 PM smoothie cleanup, a pasta dish for dinner. This morning's out the door. Breakfast plate, heavy pots, shiny pans, tiny spoons.

Plastic bowls I bought at Target and fully believed I would never use more than once. But here we are, and the whole time I'm thinking, how is there not a robot to do this for me? My car can literally drive itself down the freeway, but there isn't a robot that rinses dried food off plates and slides them neatly into the dishwasher.

Laundry is the same. We have vacuum robots, but they don't really do a great job, let's be honest.

And yet dishes and laundry remain stubbornly untouched by innovation. They're the cornerstone of household work. The most mundane chores, in my opinion. The ones we roll our eyes about because we can't really ignore them, like scrubbing that little spot behind the toilet. They're the ones waiting for us in the morning when we didn't have time to finish them the night before.

Right now, this is technically, my lunch break that that little space of time in between my busy morning and the time I'm gonna leave the house and go pick up my kid. That's my lunch break. The sun is filtering through the curtains crisp white light, making the freshly wiped countertops glisten in the calmest way, birds are singing, blue sky, warm air.

I could be sitting outside with my eyes closed, soaking it in for a minute, but instead I'm doing the dishes because every time you pop that pod in and close the dishwasher door, you feel it.

That's small. Release one thing done.

And when you get home at the end of the day and the dishes are all done. You feel really good. And somewhere along the way I realized these are not nothing tasks. This is the work of keeping a household clean and fed for a small human who can't do any of it herself yet.

She doesn't drive, she doesn't have money, she can't wander to the grocery store choosing dinner. All of this, the dishes, the laundry, the shopping, the cooking, the resetting. This is caretaking and it matters even when society does not clap for it.

And yes, there are some people who have daily help, people to help with the dishes and help with the laundry, and I don't care if you do that. You're still doing the work.

You can have a nanny doing all  the dirty dishes, but who's picked out that nanny, who's trained her, who's told her exactly how you like things folded? You did. It's all part of the work. Work that feels like nothing to everyone.

I casually lean against the counter. I grab a thin mint from a green box of Girl Scout cookies. The one I bought yesterday when this cute little girl came to my door, I nibble it while the dishwasher starts. That sloshing sound, that steady hum, and suddenly I know why it feels so comforting. I remember that when I was in college, I used to dog sit for my boss.

She had a dishwasher. My apartment didn't.

At night, I'd load it up, press start and just listen to it run. It felt like order, like someone had things handled. Like evening had really come, and now I could really go to sleep. Standing here now I realize it goes back even further. It sounds like my childhood. Like my mom closing the dishwasher door, pressing start, and letting the house settle.

The dishes were done, things were resetting. Tomorrow, was quietly being prepared. I knew she had it covered. I knew I was taken care of. That's what these sounds are. The dishwasher, the dryer tumbling towels, the quiet maintenance we barely notice but rely on completely.

The shoes are still piled by the door. Toys are scattered. There's laundry waiting to be folded. If I look close enough, there might even be a cat sleeping on one of those warm towels. I push a few things out of sight. I close the laundry door because I can't deal with it right now, but the dishes will be done and the laundry is running and my cats, oh, there they are. They're curled in a sunbeam, perfectly still.

I think they feel it too.

There are a million things I could do right now, exercise, shower, work a little more, but I took this pause. I wanted to do something for my kid while she's not here. Sometimes I clean up her room. Sometimes I organize the toys and sometimes I do the dishes. I take care of her space, her home, and quietly myself.

I step outside into the sun and I take a deep breath. This is probably the quietest part of my day, the part that looks like nothing, but in her world, it's everything.

 This was Notes by Kathy Patalsky

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