Let’s talk about the dishes

Most people don’t post their messes.

The sink is overflowing, the table and countertop covered in, well, everything. It all gets cropped out or whisked away (deleted in Photoshop??) in the highlight reels on Instagram. But recently, a food blogger I work with shared a reel of her kitchen after a full day of baking.

I messaged her: “You’re keeping it real.”

Mess is part of the story.

At our place, with six of us (and often eight because we usually have someone staying in the guestroom helping out on our lifestyle property), dishes are… life. Especially on Friday nights, when there’s a crowd here for pizza.

I’ve learned to live with them. We’ve found things that help:

• Run the dishwasher on the fast cycle and empty it before guests arrive.
• Start with a clean slate: empty sink, empty counter.
• Handwash knives and boards as we go, so we can reuse them and don’t end up with a pile.
• After everyone’s gone, load what we can and run the dishwasher.
• All the plates are put on the countertop because our two boxers will find crumbs during their post-pizza-night inspection if we don’t.
• Leftovers get put away. The rest, like pizza boards and anything that didn’t fit in the dishwasher, gets stacked neatly on one part of the bench (countertop, for my American friends). It’s contained.

I’ve given myself permission to go to bed without resetting the kitchen. Other things matter more.

Someone messaged me after reading about Friday’s Pizza and said the idea of hosting every week, with all the prep and cleanup, gave her actual heartache. And I get that! If dishes already feel like too much on a regular Tuesday, the idea of extras for a crowd can be completely overwhelming.

In the U.S., a lot of households use paper plates for everyday meals. That’s not really a thing here in New Zealand—paper plates in bulk aren’t cheap, and we tend to just… wash the dishes. But it helped me understand how much mental space the mess takes up. While dishwashers can do some of the job, they don’t load and unload themselves!

The dishes are a good sign. They show that real people were here enjoying food. People are messy, in all ways!