I like to put wet dishes in the cabinet

I find myself thinking about my time in Finland a lot. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is the fact that no one in my house likes to empty the dishwasher. 

I know that doesn’t make sense at first, but hear me out. In our hotel room in Espoo there was an amazing feature: a dish drainer cabinet. There was a set of dishes in the kitchen cabinet, like usual. But instead of the shelves being made out of solid wood, they were made out of plastic coated wire; reminiscent of the shelving found in closets sometimes. And the reason for this wire was to let the dishes drip dry after you washed them. 

Yes, you read that right. You washed the dishes and put them straight back into the cabinet wet. The water would drip back through the open shelving into the sink or metal-covered counter below. The Finns had put the drying rack into the cabinet and eliminated a full step in the process of dish washing. You simply put the dish away and it dried itself. 

Not only did this eliminate the need for clutter on the counter, but it also eliminated the step of transferring the dishes from the drying rack to the cabinet. This saved a lot of time. 

The World Economic Forum published a video not long ago mentioning that if we want to help save the planet, one easy step we could all take was to eliminate washing our dishes before we used the dishwasher. What if we all install dish drying cabinets instead? This eliminates the need for a dishwasher at all. Instead, we could install a sanitizer for items that are difficult to wash properly or for when we don’t want to spread germs. This small change could save water, save time, and keep our homes cleaner and more efficient. 

IKEA sells a metal drip dry cabinet insert with a removable tray for catching the water. I am very tempted to purchase a set.

What did I learn from this?

It is possible to be both efficient and environmentally responsible at the same time.