If you're like me, you've probably become accustom to the modern kitchen with the modern dishwasher. When your family is done eating, you probably rinse your dishes off in the sink, load them into the dishwasher, add detergent, start the dishwasher and walk away. You go about your evening spending time with your family and friends while the dishwasher does the work. When we made the decision to go full-time, I never even thought about what that meant for dishes. We started looking at RVs and I didn't even notice the lack of dishwashers in the kitchens. As we were preparing for our journey, I remember coming to the sudden realization that we would be washing dishes by hand once we moved into the RV full-time. That may have been one of the few times I considered backing out of the arrangement. After my initial shock that we would be without such a basic amenity, I prepared myself mentally for "roughing it" on our journey. Here we are, one year later, and I reflect on how silly it was that I ever considered backing out of this journey because of the lack of dishwasher in the coach. While I'm still not a fan of washing dishes (never was when I had a dishwasher either), doing so in the RV is not near the burden I once thought. However, I do want to share with you a little secret I learned a couple of months into our journey that changed the way I do dishes in the RV. When we started our journey, I had to relearn how to wash dishes by hand. Before I washed dishes in the RV for the first time, I reflected on growing up in a house without a dishwasher and reminded myself of the process. You fill one side of the basin with water, add the soap, scrub the dishes and then transfer them to the other side of the basin. When you're ready to rinse, you rinse them in the second side of the basin and transfer them to a dish drying rack (or towel laid out on the counter). So then I thought to myself, all I have to do is apply that same technique to washing dishes in the RV. I was immediately faced with an obstacle. The sink in the RV did not have a split basin. How was I supposed to keep the dirty dishes separate from the clean dishes when all of the water in the basin would be dirty? I had to adjust my approach. So, instead of washing all of the dirty dishes first and then rinsing all of the clean dishes, I went through the whole process with each dish. I scrubbed it with the scrub brush, rinsed it off into the dirty water and then immediately put it in the drying rack to the side. That worked pretty well but I quickly realized how much water I was using and how much extra time it was taking because I had to turn the water off and on in between each dish. This was a better process for the RV but it still didn't feel right. It felt wasteful. Fast forward to October when Rob's grandma fell ill and we found ourselves in Wichita staying in my brother's house. My sister-in-law always had this bottle of foaming dish soap next to her sink. She would squirt a little bit of that dish soap on a sponge and scrub down (and rinse) a dish or two if the dishwasher was full. She never left dirty dishes sit in the sink. Because of that, my whole family got into the habit of either putting their dishes in the dishwasher or washing their dishes and putting them away. It got me thinking. If that worked so well in her house, why wouldn't that work in the RV? ![]()
The next trip to the store I made, I purchased a bottle of the foaming dish soap and started using it in the RV. I didn't bother filling the basin with water. Instead, I would fill a bowl or a cup with water, let it soak for a bit, transfer that water to the next bowl or cup and use the scrub brush to wash each item as I went. This was so much easier! And I didn't use near the amount of water each time I did dishes. I would simply gather as many of the dirty items on one side of the basin and then put the washed, soapy dishes on the other side. When I gathered enough soapy items and I started to run out of space, I would turn on the water, rinse the group of dishes that had already been washed and put them in the drying rack. Changing to this method saved a ton of water, which is really important when your gray tank only holds 40 gallons of water before you have to go outside and dump the tank. And if you're not hooked up to sewer hookups for an entire weekend (like we were at the race tracks most weekends), this became even more important.
Learning to wash dishes without filling the entire sink basin with water felt like a life hack to me. Then I wondered if everyone else already knew this method of dish washing and I was just late to catch on. A couple of weekends ago, I was at the race track spending time with friends - friends that recently purchased an RV themselves. My friend was talking about doing all of the dishes from the prior night's cookout. She was telling me how they had run out of water after washing all of the dishes from the prior evening and they wouldn't even have water to wash that evening's dishes. The first question I asked her was, "are you filling the entire basin with water when you wash your dishes?" She let me know that she was filling the basin. I jumped at the opportunity to share my life hack with her. And that's why I'm sharing it with all of you.
Do not fill the basin with water when you're washing dishes. Purchase a bottle of foaming dish soap. Scrub, rinse and repeat. This is the simple but apparently not so commonly known secret to washing dishes in an RV.
-Do not fill the basin with water when you're washing dishes.
-Purchase a bottle of foaming dish soap. -Scrub, rinse and repeat. This is the simple but apparently not so commonly known secret to washing dishes in an RV.
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AuthorsRobert & Tosha Lackey are full-time RVers, business owners and parents focused on providing a unique, well-rounded educational experience for their children through real-life learning on the road. Archives
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