I don’t know why I’m writing about this, I really don’t. All I know is I have to get this off my chest.
When you’re playing video games, dirty dishes are the worst.
I am so, so tired.
Dirty Dishes pic via Shutterstock
Picture the scene, I believe it’s a very common scene you can relate to. I’m playing The Witness. It’s 9pm.
My wife says, “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.
I say, “okay, I’ll be up in an hour.”
She says, “can you finish off the dishes.”
I say, “sure”.
My wife goes to bed, I continue with my video games.
Two hours pass. I look at the clock. Shit. It’s 11pm. I have to be up in 7 hours.
I still have to do these goddamn dishes.
Dirty Dishes pic via Shutterstock
But the game. The game. I am playing the video game. Argh bugger it. I’ll give it another hour.
The dishes sit. Responsibility sits. The real world sits. The real world requires your attention. You must attend to this task, this real world task.
But… the video game.
Another hour passes. It is now midnight. I have to be awake in six hours. The dishes. They still require my attention.
The dishes are real, but they are also a metaphor. Those dirty dishes: that’s the real world, messing with you. The real world, telling you that shit needs to get done, that what you are currently doing is a bad idea.
The dishes are telling you: it doesn’t matter how long you play this video game, the real world isn’t going anywhere. The longer you play the more difficult the real world task will become. This is escapism but you’ll never truly escape.
1am. I am still playing. The Weetbix encrusted on my toddler’s Spiderman bowl are hardening. I will have to scrub that bowl harder. I will be very tired. I will wish I had done this four hours ago.
Dirty Dishes pic via Shutterstock
I keep playing.
At 1.30am I tap out. My brain is frazzled. I work it out. I have to be awake in four and a half hours.
I still have to do the dishes.
The dishes are still dirty.
I still have to do the dishes.
I did the dishes.
I don’t know why I am writing about this. I am very tired. Please forgive me. I hope you can understand.
I hope we can find some common ground here.
Fuck dirty dishes.
Comments
46 responses to “When Playing Video Games, Dirty Dishes Are Your Worst Enemy”
Fuck dirty dishes. Fuck them with an oat encrusted spoon.
I actually get this. Also just chores in general. I’ve been powering through the Mass Effect games lately and my house is a pig sty.
sounds like your dishwasher doesnt work, maybe time to install an automatic one???
A wife?
Oh lordy no you didn’t… Haha
Nonsense. He has kids.
Good idea! Get them started at 7 and you have a good 10yrs of dishwashing before they leave home.
My girlfriend and I have this agreement where we do our own dishes.
Anyone who eats off it or uses it to cook, cleans it.
I mean, if you have time to get up, put it in the sink and fill it with water, then you have time to slap on the gloves and burn the dishes.
How does that work if one person cooks for both?
“Hey, thanks for dinner, but you got it dirty so you clean it!”
We clean AS we go.
A scenario can go like this: I’ll serve the food off the pan and onto the plates, and while I’m washing the pan, spatula, knives, cutting board, and wiping down the bench, my girlfriend will relocate the plates to the table, setup drinks, cutlery, etc.
Then when dinner is finished, we’ll only have to clean a plate, cutlery, and a glass between us.
Me and my wife take turns cooking dinner, and whoever didn’t cook that night cleans the dishes. It’s a fair system imo.
I tried doing that, but I’m a very clean cook, where my partner sometimes gets food on the floor, on the stove top, inside the microwave, on the kitchen wall, etc.
To me, that’s not a fair system…
Yep wash as you go is the best idea, including whilst cooking.
Yuck 4 and a half hours sleep, just the thought of it makes me hot with stress
It’s about standard for me. Especially in this heat, in a house without air con.
Look Mark, I get it. After work, family time – dinner for Mr 5y.o, bath time for said kid, then finally getting around to adult dinnertime, maybe a movie or episode together after 9, missus off to bed 1030-11. And then the only freely available gaming hours. Do those dishes first!
Honestly – being a parent just adds another layer of “process” to the routine – I find I need to finish up those cycles before I can really relax (and fall asleep around 3 with a controller in hand, or at least nearby).
And also. Cockroaches. Dishes Mark. Process! It’s the last step needed in inventory management before one can venture into that dark night of gaming escapism.
Procedurally generated dishes from recycled assets – always unique in their assembly/arrangement – but strangely familiar! Grind that shit!
HAHA, been there. I would always make my fireteam wait in destiny while I did jobs between raid sections. I would use the “coffee break” as an excuse to quickly wash dishes or iron kids school uniforms.
Rule in my house is if you cook you don’t do the dishes. As the wife generally cooks I generally do the dishes. Except I’m organised…When I get home from work I get changed, feed the dog, bath the kids if necessary then empty the dishwasher whilst wife is still cooking and start stacking it with the breakfast/lunch dishes. Once we’re done eating the plates etc go from the table, get rinsed and straight into the dishwasher along with any pots/pans still remaining.
10 minutes after we’ve eaten the dishes have been dealt with. Kids go to bed by 8pm and then I’m all set for gaming without distractions (unless you know, the wife…)
The way to do it. Minus the kids, for my own sanity.
Yep, it’s the whole do your homework/chores before playing that gets spouted at you whilst growing up….Except in this case I actually apply it because the result is more gaming time and less distractions.
This is our rule as well. One bonus though, the kids earn 50c if they do the dishes. $1 if they do them without having to be asked first.
Probably works out cheaper than the running costs of a dishwasher.
Yeah, when my kids are old enough they’ll take turns with me to do dishes.
Such a noob. Skip meals while gaming, you don’t need the calories sitting on your ass and there’s less dishes to do. It’s a win-win. For the more advanced warcraft veteran the same principle applies to dressing yourself.
For those with families and responsibilities you can’t skip meals. Even if you skip it for yourself there’s still dishes from the rest of the family that need to be dealt with.
Super advanced tip for expert players: if you don’t have a family then you can skip meals and there’s even less dishes!
Isn’t this why we invented the dishwasher?
When do robot butlers become a thing again? Please be soon.
For me, now, the dishes get done before gaming begins.
Home from work. Do whatever till dinner is ready,eat, wash up – my wife cooks, so I do dishes.
It makes things easier. It only takes a few minutes, and then the night is yours.
Even if you do kick on into the hours of bleeding eyeballs, you don’t have to wake up to your wife threating you with a carving knife caked in last nights dinner – it will be a shiny clean one.
Dishwasher plus microwave diners = little to no dishes. It’s worth the shitty microwave diners.
Generally my fiancée cooks and I do dishes. This is a good thing because she is so clumsy that I have named her “droppy”, I once came home and half of the bowls were smashed lol.
But anyway, dishes are all about the soaking mate. Hot as fuck water does the trick most of the time, the rest is easy.
LOL.
Love it, this is me every night. Do the dishes first, it’s the only way.
divide into desirable chores, i vaccuum, mop, tidy rooms, my wife does dishes and washes clothes, we divide any other chores, like cooking, usually to whoever has the most energy at the end of the day as full time working parents.
I’m hearing you, I’m hearing you mah bro….
See, welcome to my world. Wife, 3 kids under the age of 5. I wake at 4:30am, coffee and work by 5:30am, physical job, hard.
I’m usually home by 3:10pm right after I pick up the kids….(my wife doesn’t drive…not can’t…doesn’t…). So 3:30pm I start my workout, 1 hour per day mon-sat. Then I start dinner (some nights)…then I vacuum and clean house ( Most days)…By 5:30pm my wife takes over with cooking, then I spend time with my kids in that other world they call ” outside “.
By 6pm dinner is usually done and we’ve eaten…..I wash the dishes….there they stay drying…
Then I bath/shower the kids (at this stage of the day I’m questioning their parental Lineage).
I smell beautiful, like a bunch of roses……
So then I hit the showers. By that time, kids are dressed and I physically put them to bed because those little sh1ts don’t listen when it’s 7:30pm and I only have 2 hours left before I need to crash myself……
1 hour later, kids are still jumping on the bed laughing at me. Of course my lovely wife is in the room right next door but calls out to me to ” sort the girls ” because you know, I’m in the downstairs room and into a game for only 10 minutes.
9pm finally back into a game…..really enjoying the peace, quiet and relaxation when I realize I only have 45 mins to play. In bed by 10pm, no hanky panky because wife has a headache or bad back or plague….2am…wake up being nudged for snoring….3am…baby crying ” can you go get her?….” ….True story and this is the reason I have a steam backlog.
Don’t even get me started on weekends
For the snoring thing try sleeping on your side! Sleeping on your back = snoretown
This.
OMG so this.
I’m sure the zombie version of me created the above sign in and wrote that post sometime last night between, “can you get her love?” and “why is your alarm set for 4:30am and you leave it in the bedroom?”
Well zombie version of me take heart – only 18 more years until the kids move out…if you’re lucky .
Firstly why is there an ashtray in the washing up pile in the top picture seems odd to me lol.
Secondly I wash up because no matter who else does the washing up it doesn’t get done properly unless I have done it. So as soon as dinner is completed I will wash up everything whilst my wife nags at me about not using the dishwasher for some unknown reason. (I fail to see how it even affects her when I am the one washing up) anyway thats my story.
Sometimes its better to just throw them in the bin and buy new ones XD
As the person who does the cooking at home I find it far easier if I just do it as I go.
I tend to clean knives, chopping boards bowls and all that while the meal cooks in the pan/pot/wok
By the time I eat, I then only have to worry about knife, fork, plate and pan/pot/wok
Certainly in my Fallout 4 playthrough I’m taking many, many coffee cups, plates, bowls etc prisoner, and taking them back to Sanctuary for execution.
Damn dishes.
Haha.
I had precisely the same experience last night playing Fallout4. Had my eye on two perks I needed to get supply lines across my communities. Fell into the ‘just one more new location to clear’ trap. Then I got supply lines up. Decided to learn how to make them work. Then figured Graygardens should get ready for human settlers etc etc. Counted down my sleep also. 1am on a weeknight is not conducive to my daytime responsibilities. *Yawn*
I just rinse dishes and leave them to stack up, rinse pots and pans, too or try to wash them immediately after serving, before i eat.
Then every fortnight i do plates, bowls, cutlery etc while watching a few episodes of whatever on Netflix / Stan / DLNA on the iPad. The only way they get done sooner is if they start smelling (which means i’ve failed in my rinsing, or usually my partner has.) Rinsing is the key to lazy, lazy, lazy living.
My partner of 14 years is just even worse than me. They’d let them go even longer, so i get away with it.
I feel your pain. I washed and sterilised 8 bottles instead of playing Fallout 4 some more.
Xcom2?
More like wash the sheets and sweep the hallway 2.
So Mark, your toddler eats Weetbix for dinner???
I think i can do all sorts of jobs between Rocket League matches. In reality i do mirco jobs. Grab keys, turn on outside light, back to couch. Play match. Run outside, move car, back to couch. Play match. Yes, i am the one you wait for. I am not proud of it but SOME of the dishes must get done.
Plastic and paper plates can be your friend.