I’ve felt strongly about the dishes since I moved out from home, a kitchen with a dishwasher. My thoughts range from a routined resistance to an appreciation of the act of cleaning and end result of a calm kitchen in the evening, the comfort and stability of it as Yuriko Saito writes about in Aesthetics of the Familiar.1 I want to collect my thoughts about dishes in the evening after doing the dishes, writing down notes on what sensory experiences I had, reflections on female labour, on how and why to try to enjoy doing the dishes, and my dishware and its stories. This will serve as a way of using my truest personal lens, my own daily life, to reflect on the beauty of a task which “rarely involves articulation” (Y. Saito) and yet is a significant part of women’s history. The focus on sensory experiences is a justification that the dishes are more than a practical experience but can be an aesthetic one either. Dishes, or more so doing the dishes, are a system in itself that manifest as the subconscious planning of eating. Approaching the task as one with a meaningful impact which can teach us about senses, history and the quotidien, we find out how chores are an attempt at “maintain(ing) or (creating) small fields of order and meaning, temporary stays against (…) chaos which can be viewed however fleetingly with the pleasure of an artist” (Yi-Fu Tuan).2
I grew up in a house with a dishwasher. Doing dishes by hand was reserved to post-cookie-baking-with-friends. I didn’t know how to feel about doing the dishes until my childhood friend Lena told me she liked the warm water and so did I from that point on. I haven’t seen Lena in years but we do wish each other a happy birthday through text every year. Since I wasn’t the most ardent baker, dishwashing was not an important part of my childhood.
Mother, Washing Dishes
by Susan Meyers
She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.
Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.
Then I moved out at 19 into a studio with a small kitchen at the entrance. There was no dishwasher and so started my journey learning how to do the dishes by hand. Although it seems evident, being good at doing the dishes is not a given. My frame of reference were shiny dishes done by a dishwasher, hot and dry when you pick them up to put away. Getting old and cheap dish ware to look this clean using a sponge and my hands was laborious. And so began my obsession with dishes.
In Aesthetics of the Familiar Yuriko Saito reflects on the beauty of doing chores naming it to be a task which “rarely involves articulation”. In my case, I found myself bringing up the topic on a regular basis, usually in the form of complaints.
I hate doing the dishes. It’s my least favourite chore.
i would tell my friends. I would compare it to other chores, the laundry, vacuuming, all activities I found easier, less annoying, less gross. Ironically, vacuuming now has become my least favourite chore.
But doing the dishes has since turned sanctuary. This began through imagining that I had to take care of an imaginary toddler who certainly should not live in a place filled with dirty dishes. And within this new found sense of responsibility, I found stillness and I found order.
Now, my evenings are about washing things. Blue sponges on blue plates with soap splashing around. I take my time with it. I care about my tools, my rags, my brushes. The sequencing of tasks: toss, organise, soak, cups, plates, cutlery, rinse. I never dry my dishes, I believe the air in my kitchen does just as good of a job at it as I would. My stacks of dishes on the drying rack then become proof of my care. I used to arrange them somewhat neatly until I went to visit my friend Simran in London, whose clean plates seemed to be defying laws of physics, the way they towered next to her sink.
Doing Dishes
by Ethel Romig Fuller
Little daughter, doing dishes,
Think of water—
It is so gleaming white, so green,
Child, remember it has seen
Meadows, and has run between
Ferns and roots of trees;
It has ministered to these.
Sic proar, at your work,
The old dishpan holds a cloud,
Holds a snowbank from a mountain!
Turn a faucet,
You've a fountain!
You have rivers, you have oceans
Come to serve your whims, your notions.
And your fingers, dear, are fishes
See them dart among the dishes.
There are flowers in the suds—
Forget-me-nots, crab-apple buds.
What more could a maiden ask
Of a task?
Little daughter, doing dishes,
Think of water.
Withal, chores remain gendered jobs. Studies show that women suffer under more social repercussions than their male counterparts when their homes are untidy.3 Thus, reflections on female labour are to be salient when we attempt to aestheticise the process of doing dishes. In the 1970s, the movement “Wages for Housework”4 sought for the payment of women doing domestic and caring labour. It demanded housework be politicised. When we render chores into something artistic or aesthetic, we must equally be willing to politicise it.
In her 1969 manifesto, Mierle Laderman Ukeles declares “I am a an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother (random order).”5 She proceeds to lay out a plan for an exhibition in which she takes care of the museum, maintains it, by scrubbing its floors, dusting, cooking.
As such, Ukeles bridges art and carework. She expands the definition of the former to include what we usually do begrudgingly or at least without ‘articulation’. Taking time, consciousness and care to contend with our chores also means to appreciate the invisible work left to invisible and unsalaried workers.
Sources
1 Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making by Yuriko Saito
2 Yi-Fu Tuan in ibid.
3 Men do see the mess — they just aren’t judged for it the way women are by by Sarah Thebaud, Leah Ruppanner and Sabino Kornrich, UC Santa Barbara via The Conversation
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/men-do-see-mess-they-just-arent-judged-it-way-women-are
4‘It infuriates me’: why the ‘wages for housework’ movement is still controversial 40 years on by Gaby Hinsliff
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/07/wages-for-housework-movement-still-controversial-40-years-on
5Mierle Laderman Ukeles
https://monoskop.org/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles
Julie
Coding Class 2025
Royal Academy of Art - The Hague, Graphic Design
