Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Eco Friendly Dish Washing Lesson


Over Shabbat (Sabbath), I learned how to wash dishes the eco friendly way. After lunch, I volunteered to wash the dishes. In Israel, water is very scarce, and everyone is very conscious to conserve water. This afternoon when is started to wash the dishes, my cousin advised me to be conscientious of the water use. I started with rapidly washing all of the utensils together. She immediately stopped me and showed me how it is done.

You start by running the water to wet all the dirty dishes in the sink. Then turn the faucet off and wash each dish with a soapy sponge. As they are cleaned, put the soapy dishes on the counter top. One all the dishes are out of the sink, clean out any refuse from the sink, return all the dishes to the sink and rinse off the soap from each dish. This method keeps the faucet off the longest and separates the clean and dirty dishes. Once all the dishes are on the drying rack, use a sponga (essentially a squeegee) to clean off the counter top. Israelis love spongas – rather than moping water, they spill a half bucket of hot water on the floor and sponga it across the floor, pushing the water into a built in drain or out of the home. The counter tops in Anat’s kitchen are made of marble, and so the excess water is easily squeegeed into the sink.

White sponga on the counter top cleans up the suds.

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