I should preface, we haven't had a working dishwasher since 2023. So, in my house, we may have more after dinner chores than at your house. But I am curious, have you found a system that works for your household for kitchen cleanup in the evening? Do you have formal jobs for each household member? Does one of you do all or most of the cleanup? If you all pitch in, do you rotate chores?
Up until about a month ago, after dinner cleanup was a bit haphazard in our house. Someone always washed dishes. The other three would do everything else -- dry, clean counters, sweep the floor in the toe kick area of the cabinets, put leftovers away, etc. But we had no real system for these auxiliary chores.
Then a month ago, after some frustrations between us and minor resentment that maybe some were doing less than others, I decided we would formally divvy up the tasks. We now have one person who washes dishes and wipes out the microwave (usually me), another who puts everything away from the dish rack from the day's washing and sweeps in the toe kick area in the cooking zone, a third who dries and puts away clean dishes/cookware from dinner, and the last one transfers dishes/cookware from the counters and stove to the sink, puts away leftovers, and wipes the counters and stove down. Four distinct jobs that take approximately equal amounts of time to perform.
A couple of the jobs can be completed (or mostly so) before we sit down to dinner. So someone or someones can request to do those jobs if they have something going on in the evening and would like to be done earlier. An example, I wash dishes all day long and leave them to air dry in the dish drainer and the top shelf of the nonworking dishwasher. One daughter has evening meetings a couple of days per week. On those nights, she'll be the person who puts away everything that has air dried during the day, doing so before we sit down to eat. My husband also likes to finish up early in the evenings and will take that job on other nights. I don't mind washing, and honestly, I do the most thorough job while saving the most water, plus I'm very quick. It just makes sense for me to have that job most nights.
On nights when one or both daughters are out for dinner, I usually plan something super easy and that also has very little cleanup. Cleaning up after two people can be a lot easier than doing so for four.
