Need Soap?

I am posting this terrible photo of myself just to give a visual reference about the difference in my home to my friend Lynn’s. We had our annual Christmas party at her house this year. After most everyone left I got to washing her wedding china by hand. She wanted to put it in the dishwasher and I objected. I worried the gold rimmed edges would get ruined.

I asked Lynn for dish soap as there is never anything related to cooking or cleaning on her counters. See, not much cooking goes on in her kitchen, therefore not much cleaning is needed. And her marble countered kitchen must stay pristine white.

Lynn instructed me to look under the sink. I should have been able to figure that out for myself. There in the tidiness of Lynn’s cabinet under the sink was one tiny bottle of dawn. So tiny I thought that perhaps it was a sample mailed to her to clean ducks who had gotten in an oil slick. (Lynn, whose nickname is “baby squirrel rescue,” is a notorious animal lover.)

I picked up the tiny bottle as if it were a delicate flower. It weighed as much as a whisper, nothing like the Costco gallon sized jug of dawn at my house. “This is your dish soap?”

Then I realized I was washing the dishes in the kitchen sink, which was purely for show, like Architectural Digest show. So perhaps the tiny bottle was also a prop. I went to the butlers pantry, where the big refrigerator lived and the working sink. I found the bottle of dish soap there.

Just as tiny and delicate as the show sink. Yes, she has a butler’s pantry, but still no cooking and therefore no cleaning. Green tea lattes come in the house fully made and once consumed, the cup is disposed of. No need for soap, no washing to be done.

I wanted to put a little mark on the bottle of dish soap to show how full the bottle was, like your parents might have done on their liquor bottles when they had teenagers in the house. I wanted to do this because we will be having this party at Lynn’s house in two years and I wanted to see if any soap was used between this year’s party and the one in 2027.