less elbow grease

Here's the domestic hint for today:

When washing dishes by hand, let the detergent do the majority of the work! What do I mean? Well, instead of doing most of the work yourself by washing the dishes in random order, take your soaped-up sponge and work the detergent into the difficult dishes first, and set them aside. Then wash the rest of the dishes, letting the detergent loosen the stuck-on food on the hard-to-wash dishes that you set aside. By the time you are done washing and rinsing the regular dishes, the more difficult to clean dishes will require a lot less elbow grease!

This is something I didn't think of doing until fairly recently. Sometimes if I know I won't be washing the dishes right away, I'll still make time to wet the sponge, apply detergent to it, and 'massage' the suds onto the harder to clean messes before I do something else (like eat). I've been amazed at how much less effort I'll have to put in later for the little bit of effort now.

Of course, it's always advisable to have the dishes at least soaking in water and not let them dry out with food stuck on them.