Concerning the "bachelor wash"

One time when I was chatting with someone about it, I learned of the phrase "bachelor wash," which means the phenomenon must extend beyond my household and the times I've seen it executed (frequently) by my darling husband and (a few times) by his somewhat wayward nephew.

And I'm not using this symbolic space to complain, only to muse about it. Well, ok, maybe I'll complain a little.

For those who don't know - and I'm by no means a professional on the topic but I'll take an educated guess - a bachelor wash generally means, a sloppy dishwashing job. Define "sloppy"? I suspect it can be a variety of things. In >my< experience, it means: putting some dish soap on the fingers, running the fingers over the surfaces of a dish/glass/what have you - but only those upon which a nutritive substance has obviously made contact. So, for instance, that means the inside of a glass, or the top of a plate. Rinse. Done!

Ya know what I'm talkin' about? Can I get an "amen"?

Mark well, the decent side of my character usually comes to the fore when I notice signs of the bachelor wash. I usually think, "well, bless his heart, at least he makes an attempt," as I re-wash the item(s) I've found.

There was one time I went kinda spasmotic. We had both the husband and the nephew living under the same roof. In our kitchen, our dish situation is thus.

Our kitchen is wee small; very little counter space. So, above the sink there is a good-sized window; on either side of the window there are cabinets. In front of that window, bracketed to the sets of cabinets, we've run 2 rows of racks that we use for letting the dishes air dry. Pretty smart, I think. Drying dishes are out of the way, the dripping water (mostly) falls down into the sink, and there's enough rack room to hold the aftereffects of a decent-sized dinner party.

So, on the spasmodic day in question, I schlepped into the kitchen for a cuppa joe, where the early morning sunlight came beaming murkily through a top rack of rather filthy-looking glasses. It's one thing to pull out the occasional dirty glass out of a cabinet. It was another thing to see a whole set of purportedly clean dishes that would need to get re-washed. Dealing with one male doing the bachelor wash was one thing; I wasn't going to re-do the work of two.

Thus I shepherded the menfolk into the kitchen, explained that I was tired of re-washing their dishes, and explained that BOTH sides of dishes get dirty, and both sides need to witness the cleansing effects of soap and a sponge (or some other device that will make good, wiping contact with the surface area), not just an index finger. One might think that this would be already obvious. I mean, just look, for goodness' sake. See this wine glass? See the fingerprints and smudges all over it? Do you really want to have a guest over and serve him or her a nice bit of wine in this? Do >you< really want to drink a nice bit of wine out of this? I sure wouldn't. And that's to say nothing of plates the undersides of which are greasy where they were once sitting atop another dish that was dirty, and so on.

I am >pretty< sure, if I remember the looks on the faces rightly, that I came across as a total, overreacting, bitch. Didn't care, and still don't. I wasn't going to - and still wouldn't were I similarly situated again - re-do TWO people's work.

But at bottom, I just couldn't understand, and still don't, why anyone would do the bachelor wash in the first place. Does it satisfy the prime directive (i.e., to have clean dishes)? Not really. Is it faster than washing dishes well? Absolutely not. I've slung suds more than any normal person should have to in my years of barrista-ing, when the dishes really and truly did need to be all clean and sanitized. Washing them well and washing them fast are not mutually exclusive. Mind, I know I'm not one to get every single thing perfectly spot-free (looking at the outsides of our pots and pans will make that clear enough). But you sure won't get a finger-printed lip-smudged wine glass from me when I'm done, either.

So, yeh, the bachelor wash. Don't get it. And fortunately, even though our house has been full of people all summer, I haven't had to deal much with it - thanks, y'all! But still, every now and then, I still pull out of the cabinet a "clean" glass all covered in fingerprints, I'm sure symptomatic of G's dishwashing. Sigh. Bless his heart, at least he makes the attempt...