I use a different method:

- I come home from work, unbelievably tired.

- I see dishes in the sink. I scold, I mean, remind the kids to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. This works somewhat, they now do it about 50% of the time. I'll keep on them.

- I then rinse off any dishes in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. I don't keep score on whose turn it is. If my wife didn't do them already, she probably didn't have the time.

- It gives me time to mentally pause and slow down from the work day.

- If something needs done and it'll take 5 minutes or less, I just do it.

I’ve always been a straight into the dishwasher person, unless it was already clean and I was too lazy to unload it. Going to the sink first is extra work.

Last fall I stopped trying to optimize loading the dishwasher and waiting to run it until it was full. I call it "dishwasher anarchy".

Now it gets loaded haphazardly throughout the day, run at night, and emptied the next morning.

It really, really offends my sensibilities. Stuff is in the "wrong" place. We are using a lot more detergent. I assume we are using a lot more energy and water.

I haven't had any dishwasher-related fights with my wife and daughter since we started this new protocol. I guess that's a win.

Huh. I would never have thought of "pile up dirty crockery until some later time" as an option!