Sink Zero

I have always wanted to keep an empty sink.

It’s my kitchen equivalent of Inbox Zero, the idea popularized by Merlin Mann (who, in one of those weird small-world connections, apparently dated my good friend Ross’s wife Kimmie when they were younger) with 43 Folders. David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy lives in the same ballpark.

Of course, these days we have so many inboxes that exactly zero of mine have any realistic chance of ever being empty.

My sink is no different.

Dishes, like laundry, are never-ending. Just when you think you’ve finished the job to be done, your son emerges from his room carrying half the plates, bowls, and cups you thought had gone missing. Congratulations! You get to start over.

The funny thing is, I actually enjoy loading the dishwasher.

Not just tossing stuff in there. Packing it. I have patterns. Certain bowls fit perfectly alongside certain plates. Glasses have their places. There’s an elegant geometry to the whole thing, which makes it immediately obvious when someone not named Rob has contributed a little chaos theory to my carefully constructed system.

This morning, I was getting toward the bottom of the sink when I realized something wonderful might actually happen.

You know that moment in Tetris when the long, straight piece finally arrives? You’ve got four complete rows, a perfect column waiting on the right, and everything is about to disappear in one glorious move.

That was my sink.

Except the dishwasher was already “full,” and I still had three lids from our glass storage containers to deal with.

Time for some rearranging.

I started moving things around, finding little pockets of wasted space, shifting plates and bowls to make room. It reminded me of those old hard drive defragmentation screens, with the little colored blocks moving around until everything was neatly packed together.

Whatever happened to defragging, anyway? Is storage so plentiful now that nobody bothers? Beats me.

There’s an interesting balance between perfection, efficiency, and effort. At some point, the time spent optimizing the dishwasher probably exceeds the value of fitting one more dish. But I wasn’t quite ready to surrender.

Besides, there’s one important rule. Everything has to actually get clean. Packing another dish doesn’t count if it blocks the water from reaching its neighbors.

A few more adjustments. One lid here. Another there. The last one slides perfectly into place.

And there it was.

Tetris!

Dishwasher full.

Sink zero.