How to Wash Dishes without a Dish Rack

If you don’t want to use a dish rack to air dry your dishes, and you don’t mind drying them as you go. Consider using this quick and simple method instead.

This is what I do…

Once I’ve prepared my water in the kitchen sink, I wash a (medium or large) plate first and I sit it on the counter. However, if you don’t have any plates to clean, you can just take a clean one out of the cabinet.

First I wash my silverware. As I wash my silverware, I sit the wet silverware on the plate so that it can drip dry on the plate. Once I’m done washing all of the silverware or once the entire plate is full, I towel dry my silverware and put it away and empty the accumulated water in the sink.

I do the same with cups and bowls—anything that will fit on the plate so it can drip dry there, rather than all over my counter. And I continue this process until I’m done the dishes. Not all things will fit on the plate. If they don’t, I just towel dry them as I go and put them away.

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You could also do this with other items in your kitchen–not just a plate. One item that comes to mind is a cookie sheet. You’ll want to use the kind with the raised sides (assuming there are other types), so you don’t risk water spilling out of it.

Lastly, one other thing that might be helpful to mention is that I tend to wash in groups. For instance, I’ll tend to wash all of the things that go in a certain cabinet and then move on to a group that goes into another cabinet so that everything that goes in the same area is stowed away at the same time.

Having come up with this simple method, I haven’t missed a dish rack since.

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