Queer Domesticity #001
On Washing Dishes
When I was fourteen, in looking back on it, can best be described as the first instance that maybe I might grow up to be an adult with mental illnesses, I almost ran away. The night before the act, I'd packed a bag and planned which city bus would take me somewhere safe enough for me to sleep outdoors. My mom drove me to school the next morning, and right as I was about to get out of the car I told her, "I don't want to come home again." (Which also: wow, what a sweet baby I was. I really loved my mom and did NOT want to run away. But I didn't want to come home!) I was an incredibly quiet and complacent teen, and this statement shocked her deeply; she asked why not, and I told her: "I feel like you don't care about me anymore. I feel like the only thing that matters anymore are the dishes."
Today, my relationship with dishes is different to say the least. As an almost 30 year old living alone during a pandemic, they still pile up, and yes, I do still feel like the only thing that there's room for in my silly little head are dirty dishes, but I approach dishes much differently now.
For the past few months, my dishwasher has been out of commission, which means I've restarted a nightly ritual of washing dishes, cleaning the sink, and setting myself up for a calm–or as calm as can be when you have a cat literally biting your ankles for food–morning. I feel incredibly in control when I wash dishes. Even when I let the sink get too full, this is a project with steps deeply ingrained in my bones, and can finish. Sometimes it takes fifteen minutes, sometimes it takes an hour, but by the end, everything is clean and clear, a metaphorical fresh start in front of me. I almost always feel inspired to plan the next day after washing dishes.
I want to offer this: when life is huge and unmanageable, do the dishes. My heart rate slows down at the filling of my dual sided sink: one with hot, soapy water (I'm currently obsessed with Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds), the other with cold water and a splash of vinegar (for the squeaky clean feeling). And when my hands feel too anxious to write or do anything that feels "actually productive", they know how to take a sponge, use the soft blue side to soap up a dish, and work out any small (or large) aggressions with the darker, abrasive side. I place them into a drying rack, one by one, returning order to chaos, and then dry them with old, but freshly laundered tea towels. My hands know what to do. I know what to do. I forget that a lot lately. I know what to do. My body knows how to move forward, how to take me out of a bad situation. I just have to turn on the water; to take one right step.
When I do this every night, the dreams aren't as scary, the morning isn't full of regrets, the lemon rinds in the disposal don't turn moldy. But that's the thing about restarting, you can do it whenever. It's nice to set yourself up for a perfect restart at the end of each night, but sometimes it's 2:37 in the afternoon when you need that restart, or 4:11 in the morning. It's the doing that counts.
I did not run away when I was fourteen. My mom told a friend's mom I was struggling, and I stayed over her house for a week (shout out to school uniforms for preventing me from being an outfit repeater). I came back, and we let the dishes pile up in the sink because there were more important things for us to deal with, like our new life with a strange man (her husband) always present. And we eventually washed the dishes again. I scrubbed, she rinsed and dried. We moved forward. Things got messy again, but we kept remembering that we knew how to start over.
Queer Housekeeping: SANITIZE YOUR FUCKING SPONGES
Babe, I love you, and your sponges are filthy. I get why you use them! They're soft AND scrubby! They, at a glance, seem cleaner than a dish rag, which, even in its name as a "dish rag" feels unappealing. But sponges are dens of sin, and by sin I mean germs. You gotta sanitize those things at least once a week! Here's how:
Option 1: Boil the sponge. I tweeted about this a few weeks ago. This is my go to. Bring some water to a boil in a pot, add a tablespoon or two of vinegar, and boil the sponge for 5-10 minutes. Please let the water cool down before draining the pot and then squeeze out your sponge, and let it dry. With this method, you can keep your sponge for 6-8 weeks.
Option 2: Dishwasher. Dishwashers are fancy and usually have a "sanitize" setting, or at least an "extra hot" setting. That's what you want. Throw your sponge on the top rack and take it out when the dishwasher is finished running. Let the sponge dry out somewhere away from the wetness of the sink. This is for my lazy bitches who can't boil water.
Option 3: Bleach. I love bleach. I. Love. Bleach. It's the Margaret Monts (my grandma) in me. At least once a week, I fill the sink up ⅔ of the way with hot water, a squeeze of dish soap, and a quarter-cup of bleach. I'll add my sponges, dish rags, and microfiber cloths into the water, and let it sit for a while. Here's the best part: right before you rinse out your sponge/cleaning cloths, you can scrub down your sink! If you have a white, porcelain sink, it'll be whiter than you remember, and if you have a metal sink, somehow it'll be the shiniest it's been. Once again, do not forget the vital last step of letting your sponge dry out! This is such an important step.
Your sins are forgiven, you're written in the book of life, and now you know that you're cleaning your dishes instead of wiping soapy salmonella across them!
Queer Homemaking: Candles
It's candle season! Or, if you're a Jewish lesbian, it's autumnal candle season! Because let's be honest, every season is candle season! Two common problems arise during candle season: tunneling, and what to do with the jars.
Tunneling. I learned this term officially from my pal Gus a few days ago. Tunneling is when you burn a candle unevenly and the sides stay really high while the center of the candle disappears into the abyss. How do you solve it? Place your solid candle in a bowl, and pour very hot water all around the jar. Let the wax melt itself (you might want to grab your wick with a clothespin (or nipple clamp if you're in a bind (ha, a bind)) to prevent it from falling into the melted wax) and then re-solidify in what should now be an even, un-tunnelled candle. To prevent this from happening again, trim your wicks and let it burn until you see melted wax all across the top of your candle. This will prevent your candle's wick from making a super high and out of control flame, and make sure that every time the max melts and re-solidifies, it's happening evenly.
Empty candle jars. I hate throwing out candle jars because it somehow feels so wasteful! When my candles are at the end of their burning lives, I fill the jar with boiling water and let it sit overnight. In the morning, there's a solid disc of wax on top of a jar full of water. I take the wax and either throw it away or save it to use on a wax warmer. I then fill the jar again with boiling water, a touch of soap, and when the water is hot but not dangerously so, scrub away at the jar until clean. I have former candle jars moonlighting as tiny cups, art supply holders, and random decorative glass all around the house. Try it!
What I'm Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. All the gays are reading this/thinking about reading this and yeah, you should be as well. Check out her interview from On Being with Krista Tippet if you can't wait for it to arrive from your library/independent bookstore.
What I'm Listening to: The Two Princes podcast from Gimlet Media on Spotify. If you liked Adventures in Odyssey, Lord of the Rings, and/or She-Ra, this is for you. Plus, Christine Baranski is in it???
What I'm Cooking: Cook's Illustrated Apple Crumble (I replaced almonds with pecans because that is my business, and used my cast iron skillet because I love myself)