Did you know you can retire from the dishwasher?
I did.
One day I looked around and thought, I bloody hate dealing with the dishwasher. The only thing worse than unloading it is reloading it. Actually, there’s another thing that’s probably worse than both of them – nagging the kids to do it.
I realised, with kids 10 and 12 plus a husband, that there were three other people in the home who were perfectly able to deal with this one job. So I decided to bow out.
I excitedly announced to my family that I had some great news – I was done with the dishwasher, which was a big moment for me.
The hubby shrugged and said, fair enough – the kids should do it anyway. I agreed, but part of my retirement conditions is that I’m also not nagging, reminding, managing or enforcing it as a chore.
I was completely bowing out of the whole situation. I was going to treat it as my family did the overflowing laundry basket, the empty toilet roll, the spill in the fridge. I was going to go about my day as if it wasn’t there.
Shouldn’t we all just pitch in?
I have clients who tell me, “I just wish my family would see all the stuff that needs to be done and take initiative.”
In a perfect world, everyone in your home would look around, see what needs to be done, and just make it happen. But that’s just not how brains work.
Never once have I thought, Wow—it’s been really windy lately. I wonder how the gutters are looking. Might get up there and clean them.
Why? Because there’s an unspoken understanding in my home that my husband is the one who does these things. And he does them without being asked. That’s part of HIS mental load. I’m not trying to put more on my plate, so of course I’m going to leave that status quo firmly in the let sleeping dogs lie position.
Why would I change that?
The same applies to all the housework I do around here. I’m the one doing the majority of my home’s care tasks; my family isn’t going to motivate change.
Clear division of tasks – ADHD housework hack
For two-parent families, especially where one or both have ADHD -I’m a big believer in the divide-and-conquer technique. One partner does laundry, one does cleaning. One does cooking, and one does bath time. One handles sports registration for the kids, and one does the kids’ dental appointments. (This is an insane simplification, but you follow, right?)
And depending on how old your kids are, they can own certain jobs too.
There’s this great TikToker, Sharon.a.Life, who has about a million kids. Each one gets their own job, and they keep it for the whole year. Jobs like: cleaning up the entryway, tidying the living room, unloading the dishwasher, tidying the stairs, breakfast cleanup, taking out the bins, etc.
They’re homeschoolers, so life looks different in their house than in most Aussie families—but it’s food for thought.
Obviously, what works in your family will depend on your resources, your partner’s attitude, the division of labour, and about a million other things—but you get the point, right?
If you want to look more into this, I highly recommend reading Fair Play, and it explores all of these things. There’s a whole process for figuring out who does what, and every couple I know who’s gone through it says it’s life-changing. Why? Because mostly, we only see our own responsibilities. It helps to clarify things.
I’m not going to go too far into all of that because it’s deeply complex and you should head Eve’s website and have a deep-dive. But I am going to talk about little, meaningful changes I made to help me get your home and life under control.
My house gets messy so fast!
So, Back to the Dishwasher – Some FAQ’s
One of the most common questions I get asked about this whole “dishwasher retirement” thing is, Does it actually get done?
Of course, it does. Because it was a fair ask, and my family aren’t jerks. They see how much I do and appreciate it.
Does it get done the way I would do it? No. Literally nothing is put away the way I would do it.
But them’s the breaks. You can’t have it all. And you definitely can’t have the Instagram-perfect, colour-coordinated Tupperware drawer of your dreams when you hand over the reins. Retired means retired.
And that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make because Cinderella is not a role I’m here to play. I, like all mums, have other priorities—and perfect drawers aren’t higher on my list than my dishwasher retirement plan. (Did I just get kicked out of the professional organiser guild?)
How do you get away with that? Ummm the same way I ‘get away’ with not mowing the lawn. It’s not my responsibility anymore. And that’s ok.
It’s Not Actually About the Dishwasher
It’s about granting yourself permission to ditch something you hate if it’s a reasonable ask. Almost every family I know has an adult member who doesn’t generally contribute to one huge category of housework like laundry or cooking, cleaning or yard work. For me, I don’t do the dishwasher.
I’m also going to be mature here and not list all the jobs in the house that only get done by me. It’s killing me – but I’m going to resist. Why? I don’t have to justify this any more than my husband needs to justify what he does and doesn’t do in our home.
But why did I need to make this change? Mostly because I was resentful. So many of the jobs my hubby does in this home are both rewarding and permanent. Does he feel like painting the house and landscaping and building stuff in his rare time off? Not really, I mean *maybe* but he does get to enjoy the spoils of achieving things that are permanent.
I was not. Because of the nature of what I took care of, I felt stuck in a hampster wheel of relentless, cyclical and temporary tasks like feeding people, washing things, cleaning and generally doing things that instantly get undone. And it sucked.
My house is so messy, where do I start?
Choosing What to Prioritise
One day I walked in and saw that – yet again – the dishwasher needed my attention before anything else could be done and I realised, if I’m not prioritising ‘permanent things’ I was the only one who could fix that.
So, instead, I consciously choose to take it off my mental load.
This blog is getting written, in part, because I’ve chosen not to see all the other things that need doing in my home. I’ could wait for the right time, the right encouragement, the tidy home, and the fed kids. But that stuff is never truly done.
That’s not to say I NEVER do the dishwasher. Of course I do it now and then—but I do it as a favour, an act of service to my family. And when I do, I strut around like I deserve a medal.
Dedicated to the woman I was once partnered with in boot camp class who declared, “Sorry, I don’t do burpees,” when it got to that portion of the workout. I asked if she was injured, and she just said, “No… I just don’t do burpees. They suck.”