Always dishes! I hardly get one pile of them washed, when another pile appears. Sometimes, after a meal, there really aren’t enough dishes to make washing them worthwhile. Then, after the next meal, there are so many that the dish drainer can hardly hold them all!

If I didn\’t go for early-morning rides, I could take care of dishwashing right after breakfast. But I\’m not going to give up my exercise for a perfectly clean kitchen! Ergo there isn\’t time to wash dishes before I leave for work; so they have to wait until I’m home in the evening. Most days I carry lunches to work; and that means plastic food boxes and plastic bags (for carrot sticks, apple wedges, etc.) to be washed. Yes, you read that right – I wash and re-use plastic bags. Sometimes I’ll have five or six of them! And then there’s whatever plate or bowl I used for supper; plus, in many cases, a cooking pot.

It would be nice, I think, to have a bicycle-powered dish washer. After all, it’s possible to hook up a bicycle to small appliances such as blenders; or even large ones such as washing machines. Wouldn’t it be fun to get in a little extra pedaling and take care of an irksome chore at the same time?

I used to have a book that explained how to do such hook-ups; but I finally had to give it away. My kitchen is too cramped for any such set-up. But just think — if you can set up a bicycle-powered blender, you might burn off the calories in your smoothie before you even drink it!

Alas, afterwards there\’s still the problem of cleaning the blender. Dishes, as usual.