I put a question on one of the household whiteboards, and I thought it was a good question, but everyone else just thought they were in trouble. Which: fair enough. But that wasn’t really why I asked it, and it wasn’t meant to be rhetorical/scolding; it was meant to engage them in what I thought was an interesting discussion about the non-obvious complications of sharing a household and chores with other people.
The question was: “Household/community issue: Who should wash the birthday cake pan, when everyone ate the cake?” I am talking about a 9×13 cake pan, where you bake the cake in it and then take pieces out of it until the cake is gone—as opposed to, say, a couple of round cake pans where you remove the cake from them right away. And I am talking in this case about a cake where everyone ate some, and then everyone ate some leftovers.
Here’s why I asked: because at our house, it will not surprise you to learn it is always, always, ALWAYS me who washes the cake pan. And I don’t think that’s fair, when everyone eats the cake, and when I was the one who BAKED the cake, too.
But I was not having much luck coming up with a way it could be NOT always me, because it’s hard to come up with a POLICY. I think we could start with two policy fragments: (1) It should not be the person who baked the birthday cake. (2) It should not be the person whose birthday cake it was. But after that, I get stuck.
You COULD say that the person who eats the last piece of cake should be the one to wash the pan. Two–no THREE–problems immediately occur to me:
1. It leaves out the issue of SOAKING. I would SO much rather wash a cake pan AFTER it has been soaking for awhile. But not everyone in my household can be trusted to return to their soaking items in a timely manner.
2. More importantly, in my own household, where people do not cheerfully chip in and try to do their share but instead try to find wily ways to avoid it, what would happen is that one tiny slice would be left in the pan until it went stale, and then the question would be “Who should throw away the stale cake AND wash the cake pan?”
3. And of course, the person who ate the last slice could be the person who baked the cake, or could be the person whose birthday it was.
By this point I was fairly irritable and thinking that the real solution was to live with different people than the ones I live with. And that’s not wrong, but neither is it helpful for coming up with a policy for this current household.
The only policy I could come up with is this, and it is not as clear or concise as I would like it to be: The person who eats the last piece of cake should put the pan in the sink to soak; the next non-cake-baking/non-birthday person to be washing their own dishes should also wash the pan. This policy would work GREAT in a household of me and my clones! In my actual house it would result in a bunch of people playing chicken with their dishes: “Oh, mine are still soaking,” or “Oh, but yours were soaking first,” or “Whoops, I’m leaving for work/bed for 10 hours,” or whatever.
I am wondering what you think would be best, theoretically, and also what you think would work in your actual household.
We put it in the dishwasher
Haha, I was going to also say that we just put it in the dishwasher (so whoever is in charge of loading the dishwasher does that). I think putting it in to soak if you ate the last piece is reasonable and easy, and then it depends on how the rest of the dishes are done. Does everyone wash their own dishes? Does one person do it each day? Or is there a reason it can’t be put in the dishwasher? ;)
I stopped baking. This solves no problems and clears up no resentment but it is what has happened.
I hate my answer, but I think it probably *should* be the one who baked the cake. Which is unfair, since you’re the likeliest baker and it’s a bad reward (a chore) for doing something nice (providing dessert). But I keep thinking about a cake that is removed from the pan before consuming and how that pan would be the baker’s responsibility. If one of your kids decided to do a baking/cooking thing, you’d want them to complete the task by leaving the kitchen as they found it. It stinks that the end of the task (washing the pan) is so far removed from the beginning of the task (the baking), but I think it’s the simplest rule. That is, unless you have another household rule that the person who cooks dinner does NOT also do the dinner dishes. In that case, I think you handle the pan in the same way.
All of this could be avoided, of course, by living in a household of people who understand they are all contributing members of said household and will gladly pitch in for it’s upkeep, since there is not and has never been a Default Housekeeper. But, as you insinuated, that would probably require moving and that’s a bigger hassle than washing a pan, unfortunately.
My thoughts!
1. In a household of roommates, whoever baked the cake washes the pan. If you choose to share the cake, that is your choice.
2. In my current reality, I wash ALL dishes and my husband puts dishes away. So I wash the pan. (We literally had to go to THERAPY to come up with this system. Does he leave random clean dishes sprinkled across the counters and forget to unload the small hand wash dish rack like every other day? Yes. But the roles are clear!! So I feel like I can say, please come put away everything, with no complaining)
3. When my children are older, I think we will just assign chores by week. If you get a cake pan on a week you have dishes, that’s life! Growing up, chores could be traded amongst siblings at will, and were also tied to allowance.
Before I married, I was especially blessed with roommates who were happy to live in a family situation—we were not obsessed with whose food was whose, only doing our own dishes, etc; we all just took turns with assorted chores (including cooking a group meal almost daily) and shared supplies. That is to say I’ve never had a real “roommate” situation.
It seems to me that the last person to eat the cake should put the pan to soak, and the next person whose turn it is for dishes should wash it/load it into the dishwasher, regardless of who baked it or for whom. YMMV
Truly an interesting question.
I live in a two-person household, and I am not sure who would clean the cake pan in that situation. For sure, I would have been the baker, though, because he doesn’t bake. The question is, did I make the cake because I wanted to eat cake? Or did he ask me to make a cake? Why is there cake? If it was my whim, maybe I should clean the cake pan. On the other hand, I have begun to just let the counters get crowded with detritus when I don’t feel like cleaning, and this has spurred him into action at times.
A truly knotty problem to solve. I don’t have a solution, but this sort of household labor has been on my mind pretty much constantly for 15 years, as long as we’ve been living together.
I don’t have a problem saying the person who has the last piece should wash the pan, regardless of whether that person baked the cake, or was the recipient of the cake. But that doesn’t solve the “leave a tiny piece until it goes stale” problem.
1. Roomates all are responsible for thier own dishes. In this case, the baker is responsible for cleaning the pan.
2 – In my household (two married people and a teen) we have assigned duties, so all dishes are washed by one person (right now it’s me, but isn’t always). Having a duty (laundry, toilets, yard, dishes) that is always owned by one of the three of us reduces the resentment for me.
I think if the non baking parent isn’t down with this plan, he should ensure a really great dish washer is installed sp that it can be washed in the next load.
On our house I do the laundry and he does dishes (unless one of us is out of town or sick) so the answer is clear.
Roommates: Whoever baked the cake. Unless the roommates have decided to throw a party and divide up the work of throwing a party, in which case there should be a period of time after the party when everyone is cleaning up and the cake pan is being cleaned during that time by whoever chooses that task. Or, if the roommates do joint meals, and the cake is part of the meal, then the cake pan is handled however the other dishes from that meal is handled.
Family: Whoever is in charge of cleaning up the kitchen (hopefully this alternates) when the cake pan needs to be cleaned. Unless the cake is more someone practicing their hobby than for the family – then it’s whoever baked the cake. Or in my family, my husband, because it’s his cake pan and he has us all deathly afraid of the possibility that we would scratch it/put it in the dishwasher wrong/do something contrary to the very specific needs of this very specific type of cake pan.
It also depends on the state of the pan/temperament of the people. If washing the pan involves touching oily, disgusting guck, I will ask my husband to do it since he generally minds those things less and at least isn’t going to gag while doing it. And then I will volunteer to do something that needs doing outside, because his temperature threshold for outside chores is like 75 degrees, whereas I’m ok to at least the 90s (which it will not dip below again here until October…yay for us)
Also also…did I bake the cake while refereeing between small children who fight over who gets to add the egg and who gets to stir and then have complete meltdowns over the frosting, while my husband sat on the computer? Because then he definitely gets to wash the cake pan in solitude and silence at a time of his choosing.
In the imaginary situation with a group of housemates who are all on board with sharing tasks (as they should be, but not all are), then I think the person who makes the cake should remove the cake from the pan and put it on a plate, then put the pan to soak. (This does add one dirty dish, but I think it would be fine to go through the dishwasher, which I assume you don’t want the cake pan to do.) Then the person who is doing the dishes next, by whatever rota has been previously worked out, would wash the cake pan.
Of course, if the agreement is that everyone does their own dishes, then I will wash my own cake pan, but I will also eat all the cake.
I was going to suggest removing the last third from the pan and putting it in a tupperware! I hate how dry and gross the pan gets, so I’m always downsizing. Soft cake crumbs are a lot easier to scrub. Cake baker gets to manage when the cake is taken out of the pan, and then whoever’s doing dishes that night should tackle it until it’s done. Use metal scrubbers instead of soaking.
I think everyone gets a designated you-wash-the-dishes day, so the person who eats it last puts it in to soak, and the dishes-day person is the one to wash it. Sometimes that’s the person who baked it though. People who don’t do their dishes on the dishes-day get an extra dishes day added to their list of chores
I actually think the easiest solution would be whoever had the birthday, that person washes the cake pan. No question as to whose turn it is and it’s only your turn once a year! And by the time you’re actually washing it, it’s probably no longer your actual birthday anymore either. If cakes get eaten more often than just on birthdays I guess I’d probably just do it myself or assign someone to do it after it’s soaked.
My thoughts exactly. You got a cake. It was your preferred type of cake. Wash the pan the same way you discard the wrapping on your other gifts. You won’t have to do it again for 365 days.
I was going to say, the person whose birthday is next so they know there will be a nice clean pan ready for their celebration. But yes, simplify and have it be the birthday person! Like you said, it’s probably not their birthday anymore once the pan is washed. Definitely you want a method where everyone has to do it once a year.
I think in a household of roommates, the baker would wash the pan. It would be NICE for others to cheerily pitch in and take care of it, remembering the tastiness of the cake and the generosity of the baker. But I think that unless it was explicitly agreed upon beforehand (not a bad idea?) that the responsibility ultimately falls on the situation me who made the dish messy to clean it.
I love the IDEA of one person cooks, the other does the dishes. But in my marriage, I use a few dishes, get them moderately dirty, and try to clean (or at least pre-rinse) a lot as I go along. Whereas my husband happily makes a mess of the entire kitchen with everything he cooks and leaves it all, crusty and greasy, for another time. I don’t feel like it’s a fair trade off for him to handle my light/moderate dishes and me be left to tackle the anxiety-provoking mountain of dishes after he cooks. (He has THROWN AWAY pans before rather than wash them after they sat for too long and I refused to clean dishes I told him ahead of time I would not.) Our kids are still pretty young and we are working on being better, more thoughtful partners (we are both working but I feel like I’ve been there longer and he’s finally catching up to me, to be honest). So we both try to tackle as many of the common dishes as we can, take care of our own cooking stuff, and do each other’s cooking dishes IF we can/want to after all the others are done. When the kids get older, I very much hope to have dish weeks to balance the household upkeep chores and to prevent me from implementing Little Red Hen-esq strategies of, “Anyone who wants to eat the next cake will clean this pan thoroughly before tomorrow at noon,” which I am certainly not above doing.
In a household of my clones, I would like to think that we would happily chip in to help and be delightfully aware of the fact that others were helping, and that it would be no big deal to soak a pan or clean a pre-soaked pan. (It’s also possible that if the clones were feeling resentful of one another that we would resort to Thistle children strategies of slicing ever smaller pieces or leaving it for the baker, and then the baker Red Henning is the rest of us. My clones and I are thoughtful but also unfortunately prone to slight messiness and pettiness.)
In our house, it would be whoever is on KP duty the night the last piece of cake gets eaten, regardless of who ate said piece of cake. We have six people in the family.
Now, KP duty gets assigned thusly: Whoever did the bulk of the cooking for the meal does NOT clean up afterwards. This has been a rule in our household for years, now. (Caveat: if everybody else is ill, naturally, the person left standing, who got everyone their broth or whatnot, does KP.)
So among the remaining family members, KP duty is portioned out like so: We usually play a game of some sort during dinner, on the PS3. (This sounds odd, but we started during the pandemic and everyone really enjoys getting their dinner and gathering around the TV and there’s lots of talking, more than there would be at the dinner table, actually. Sometimes we’re playing a strategy game, sometimes it’s just Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly.)
In any case, whoever WINS does NOT have to clean up after dinner. This creates some lively and good-natured competition, as there’s something to actually win; the right to relax after dinner without worrying about cleaning up. You’ll often hear the person who cooked dinner saying, “Oh, I don’t mind that I had to pay you $500 in rent, I cooked tonight!”
Controversial opinion that we don’t necessarily follow in my house because we are casual about dish washing rotation:
The last person to eat a slice puts it in to soak, and the person whose birthday it was in honor of washes the pan.
That way it is CLEAR whose job it is, and that way everyone gets ONE designated pan to wash per year. Hardly a huge birthday sacrifice.
Any cakes baked for non-birthdays aka for personal reasons (joy of baking, friend hang out, whatever) are the responsibility of the baker just like cleaning up their own craft supplies would be.
For quite some time now, our kids have split dish duty because they don’t cook: the older kid four nights a week and the younger kid three nights a week. If your night falls on your own birthday you get a break but other holidays you do them, perhaps with help drying or cleaning counters. The provenance of the cake pan wouldn’t matter in this scenario: you wash it if it’s your night.
We do occasionally get loud complaining if a sibling has left, say, a water bottle in disgusting or moldy condition; adjudication may be handed down that the person who caused the mess must clean it. But generally it’s whatever dishes exist on your night are your responsibility.
Matthew Fray wrote a piece about how not taking these concerns seriously cost him his marriage. I feel no pity for him; I’m mad at him for making his wife have to go through moving out and getting a divorce to get away from being treated like the maid. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/marriage-problems-fight-dishes/629526/
It really starts with the men. If they don’t step up, the kids don’t either. I hate it so much.
There’s a lot about it on TikTok, too. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/marriage-problems-fight-dishes/629526/
This is reminding me of two things: Seth Meyers on what he said when his wife asked him what he wanted to do for Father’s Day: “I want to do what I always do, only without you being mad about it.”
And the way my husband will offer to take my plate or mug out to the kitchen but then leave it on the counter rather than put it in the dishwasher. WT actual F, my dude? Did you think the walk was going to tire me out? Do you think I’m going to move the mug into the dishwasher via telekenesis? You want to think of yourself as helpful without actually doing anything useful. J’ACCUSE.
We rotate which kid is in charge of emptying the clean dishes from the dishwasher and loading dirty ones (usually when I or my husband tell the kid it is time to do it—we are the project managers of this plan). Part of that job is washing knives and travel mugs that are on the counter. So, I guess the cake pan would get looped into that routine as a part of the dishes chore.
We have a white board on our fridge with our kids’ names on it and a magnet that travels underneath their names so we know whose turn it is to do dishes next. We sometimes get in trouble when there is a kid who is busy for a day and not available to do the dishes in a timely manner. But then me or my husband will hop in and take a turn. The whole system got started because my husband was sick of being the ONLY one to do dishes and kept wanting the kids to spontaneously notice and then do the dishes on their own. As if. What we needed was a system to keep who got told to do them when they needed to be done fair.
Just to note: He was doing the dishes because I was cooking and couldn’t be bothered to tell a kid to do it. My thought was, dishes are one of the few things kids CAN do. They can’t pay car insurance or change car oil or go grocery shopping, so they get the dishes. It’s a small enough job to empty a dishwasher. I still don’t know why he was doing it all the time instead of calling for a perfectly competent 13 year old.
For the entirety of our relationship, my husband and I have managed to balance chores with minimal (though not no) resentment because we’re both people who will mostly pitch in and do the necessary work until it gets done. There’s no assigned days to anything, we both cook, we both clean, I do most of the laundry, he does most of the yardwork, etc. I cop to being more physically lazy than my husband (I will leave clutter for much longer, for example), but do far more of the mental load, so I think it mostly evens out. We’ve been trying to teach our children the “pitch in until the work is done” approach for years, and I’m finally having to concede that they will likely need to be assigned tasks if we actually want them to stop heading straight for the couch after dinner every night. They are already required to empty part of the dishwasher, and have to be reminded daily, repeatedly, so getting them to do any of the other evening chores is going to be a joy, but I keep trying to explain to my husband that standing at the sink shouting to them to “come help” is really not going to do anything (even “clear the table” is too vague right now). I absolutely hated having assigned chores as a kid, mainly because I so often skipped them (things like scrubbing the bathroom, not daily chores or things I was responsible for, like my own laundry) and then felt guilty all the time. I’d really hoped to avoid chore charts and assignments with my own family, but it does seem like they do better when the expectations are more specific.
My household is not a democracy. My kids are still too small to wash up but I can almost guarantee that when they are big enough, the person designated to wash up the cake pan will be the unlucky soul who I happen to be closest to and corner when I realise the cake is finished…
Preach. Also, they can start when they are younger than you think. Let them try it (and do it badly) when they’re young—then you can jump in when they’re done to give it a cheerful “final polish”. :) They love helping when they’re small.
Yes you’re so right, it’s time to get them involved. TBH most of the washing up is done by my husband at the end of the evening, long after they’re asleep (and we have a dishwash) but when I bake with them is the perfect time to introduce it.
In a situation where there are unrelated housemates, I think the solution is to have a cake pan that can go in the dishwasher. Not that I ever lived in a house that had a dishwasher between the time I moved out on my own and the time I moved in with my husband. But if there’s a dishwasher, organize your life around taking advantage of its services.
In a family, I think the cake pan should be put to soak by whoever takes the last piece of cake. Whoever baked the cake and whoever’s birthday it was are excused from pan-washing. The pan should be washed by whoever’s birthday comes next, and it should be done to the satisfaction of whoever will be baking the birthday cake/using the pan. In other words, your reward for being a responsible, contributing member of the household is cake.
In my household of 5, the answer is “whoever’s birthday is next.” This way it always rotates, it’s always clear who’s next, and when the kids complain, I offer the soothing thought that their birthday is only “X” days away.
This is exactly what I was going to suggest!
If this is just about birthday cakes, I nominate the person whose birthday is coming up NEXT. Everyone washes one pan a year and you always know who it will be.
Our household is an I cook, he washes up household (though we have a dishwasher so it’s just pans). If he’s not here I do it all but tend to make things that don’t use many pans. When the kids are a bit older they’re doing the washing up when their dad isn’t here but they don’t know that yet.
In my house, it would have an 85% chance of being me both baking and washing. I like baking and I’d rather wash than have it washed badly. My 2 kids alternate unloading the dishwasher and filling it with dishes (before dinner – adults usually do dinner dishes). If the pan was soaking in the afternoon, decent chance that my husband would make a kid do it. Honestly, I’d be happy enough to have the time to make a cake, I would not care at all about washing the pan.
Whoever is on dish duty. Or whoever is closest when I go “okay, the current level of clutter/grime is too high, everyone find something to clean and tidy for the next 20 minutes”.
Specifically for birthday cakes, what is the person who has the NEXT birthday washes the pan? That way the pan is ready to go for the next birthday and the bday person doesn’t have to wash it. Non-birthday cakes get cleaned by either the baker OR worked into whatever dish chore rotation is created.
Just an idea, not a plan we have in practice in our house.
We have a physical Dishes Baton (an empty paper towel roll labeled in Sharpie) that gets passed from person to person. The rule here is that all dishes get done after dinner; usually they are divided among the people who didn’t cook. Last person starts the dishwasher, and woe betide the person who fails to handwash any dishes s/he uses after that. (A water glass is okay.)
So at my house, the person who ate the last piece of cake would put the pan in the sink, and then probably choose an early spot in that night’s Dishes Baton sequence specifically to avoid washing it. But it would get washed, and probably not by me.
Will you please share more about how the Dish Baton works? It sounds wonderful!
It works well for us. I generally take the first spot in the dishes lineup — partly because I want to set a good example of doing annoying things promptly and cheerfully, and also because the earlier you go, the more freedom you have to pick the stuff you want to wash.
Our kids tend to congregate in the living room after dinner (we have five kids; this summer we’ll have between two and four living at home at various points), and I walk in with the Dishes Baton to ask who’s next. I usually get a volunteer right away, because they have learned that it can be advantageous to do it early. Sometimes they will look things over in the kitchen and negotiate about what’s fair, especially if there are just two of them at home.
Using a physical object cuts down on uncertainty about whose turn it really is, as well as the tendency to flake out on a verbal instruction (“I’ll do it as soon as this video is over!” [20 minutes later] “I was supposed to wash dishes?”). If the Dishes Baton is placed on your lap, you need to get up and do your job instead of goofing off on the internet. The kids tend to be pretty cooperative, in part because it’s, like, a daily illustration that many hands make light work. And if you’re feeling grumpy about it, you can probably choose to leave the greasy skillet for a sibling, as long as you’re not going last.
<3
So is it, the first person washes the glasses, then the next washes the dishes, and the next washes the silverware, and the last washes the pans?
Or is it like, 10 minutes worth of dishes, then the next person gets it?
It’s evolved over time. When the kids were younger they had specific age-based assignments by category (silverware, glasses, etc.). Now that they’re bigger and there’s a shared understanding that it’s more pleasant to live in an environment where everybody pitches in, there are occasional amicable negotiations (“I’ll scrub this pot, but because it’s going to be slow and annoying you should do everything else that’s left”). The general vibe is “do your fair share.” (I would not have believed that we would get to this point when the kids were small and resistant, but some things really do get easier.
The correct answer: the baker who made a cake and shared it with everyone gets to tell ANYONE they choose (who also ate some cake) to wash the pan and then that person has to do it. THE END! P.S. I live in a household with similarly unaccommodating people so my opinion may be affected by a little dish-related rage.
I love this. Baker’s Choice! A little game of cake pan roulette for everyone who partakes.
What about a plastic baby Jesus baked in the cake? In my family every year at Mardi Gras we’d eat King Cake which would have a plastic naked baby Jesus baked in the cake. The lucky recipient would have to host next years party. At your house, the person who gets the slice with Jesus would have to wash the pan.
Now this is Russian Roulette but with cake, Cajun style.
I think if I was regularly seeing the people who ate the cake actively avoiding washing the pan in some petty way I would stop making cake and also be tempted to throw the pan away dirty in a fit of rage. Maybe I am mean, I’m realizing? I don’t think it should be your responsibility to determine some system of fairness, either. There are all (almost basically) adults and it seems like whenever a person in the house walks by the sink and sees dishes, and had a free minute, they should wash the dishes. And if they can’t do that I would be done and have my own 3 dishes and they can figure out the rest themselves.
This doesn’t answer your question, but you may be able to avoid the soaking step if you line the pan with parchment paper. Also eliminates having to grease the pan!
Generally if I bake something my spouse will wash the pans and whatever else I used to make the thing. If he doesn’t and it isn’t a metal pan I will put everything in the dishwasher.
I’m going to use this hack!
In my house, it’d be oldest child (age 12) who is in charge of washing dishes.
But in other more nebulous situations, I’ve definitely given my children a talking to about if they want me to keep doing nice/fun thing then they can’t leave a mess or similarly annoying result afterwards or I will stop doing that nice/fun thing!
Oh yeah, you definitely need rules that follow immovable markers. Your expectation about playing chicken otherwise is spot on.
Soaking: the person to eat the last piece (this is not an onerous task, and the reward of the last piece should outweigh any negative from having to put some water in a baking dish and then forgetting about it).
Washing: the person who’s birthday is coming up next (first some humble pie, then some birthday cake – a good preparation for life, I’d say).
If your birthday is the next one: Paul. Because you should not always be stuck with doing both, and he is the other “real” adult in the house.
One kid washed/loaded the dishwasher, the other kid dried/unloaded/put away. Always. If it was their birthday, I usually would do it, but ya know what, I still have to work on my birthday, so maybe I’m a monster, but meh. (And if this cake thing was a BFD in my house? I would simply not bake a cake. The birthday person gets a singular bakery cupcake, happy birthday, if the rest of you wanted something maybe you wouldn’t be so fucking difficult about helping.)
The dishwashing kid has now gone to college and I usually do the washing and my husband does the dishwasher loading (because he deeply, deeply cares about the manner in which it is loaded.) We also use A LOT more paper plates, which I have decided is fine because my personal paper plate usage is nothing compared to the corporate waste and pollution of this world.
In our house, whoever cooked the meal does the dishes. It solved a lot of fights and we alternate dinner nights. Me one night, my husband the next, with pizza night being my responsibility but no real dishes to do! So, in this case, since I am the only baker, I would be the only person to wash the cake pan. Also, even with sheet cake cakes I decant them into tupperware containers after singing/blowing out candles (ew)/first serving and wash the pan that day. I don’t mind washing the cake pan same day because the cake doesn’t seem to be caked (ha!) on as much as if it’s sat in the fridge to get caked on. I think for my own birthday we always BUY a cake or dessert and then I don’t have to bake it myself OR wash a cake pan.
Honestly I feel like having the baker wash the pan is probably easiest? It does seem a little like “no good deed goes unpunished,” and it would be NICE if whoever takes the last piece of cake washed it, but when my daughter bakes I like her to clean up after herself so it is somewhat logical and simple.
Also, as I age I find I am becoming more and more particular about How Dishes Are Done And How The Kitchen Is Cleaned. When I was young and in various roommate situations, I’m pretty sure we were all very slap-dash about cleaning and it was fine, I don’t remember caring. In my 49th year I like Dishes To Be Cleaned A Certain Way. It’s not that advantageous that when my children (teens) are old enough to clean like a typical youngish person probably cleans (meaning, the bare minimum!), I am much more particular about how clean things ought to be!
I’ve never been happier to be a mediocre baker! I always buy birthday cakes/treats so have never even considered this question. I highly recommend store bought cakes- both the cheaper sheet pan ones and the fancier ones.
H doesn’t like dessert (weirdo) and I’m not a great cake baker so I always get store bought cupcakes for birthdays and after reading this and really thinking about it, I’m possibly never going to bake a birthday cake.
There were three kids in my family and we rotated dinner chores with one kid clearing the table, one washing, and one drying. If it was one kid’s birthday, they were exempt from chores only on the night of their birthday. If the cake pan needed washing the next night or after then whoever was washing or drying did it. Also, the last piece of cake went to the birthday kid. This was not negotiable and never questioned. I wouldn’t say any of us ever cheerfully chipped in but if you looked for ways to get out of chores, there were definitely social consequences from the other two kids.
There were four of us kids and we had a similar system: one setting and clearing the dinner table, one washing, one drying + putting away the dishes. Three tasks rotated among 4 people on a schedule my mom wrote up and hung in the kitchen, because it also took into account nights one of us had to leave immediately after dinner for sports or music lesson or whatever. If the dishes were huge because we had another family over for dinner, parents would help out, but otherwise we did whatever dishes were there.
In my house generally I do all the baking/cooking, and my husband does all the dishes. So that makes it easy. I will do dishes if I feel like it one day, or am on a tear cleaning, but generally dishes can pile to the sky and I do not view them as my responsibility. Which is freeing.
For your house, I’d have said the last person to eat cake soaks it, next person to do a dish washes it, but that would require some cooperation/non-sneakiness out of your crew. Sometimes when I cannot rely on my children to see a thing needs doing and hop up and do it, I will just randomly shout at one of them and make him do it. I make no effort to keep it even. Sorry Charlie, suck it up. Maybe that could work here?
controversial answer? — it is late in the game for you to try to change them. if for their entire growing up years, you have taken care of it, and of all the chores, naturally, they assume that is the natural order of things. I think you either have to start early or go on strike and really stick to it, to make them see things differently.
Strike! Strike! I think Swistle should try it. Summer seems like a good time. It’s not setting a good example, but it IS showing how much work you do, what happens if it’s not done, and how unfair the whole situation is to everyone.
The other suggestions that seem reasonable are 1. next birthday washes (not sure how that works for the twins though), and 2. disposable pan.
Huh, I don’t agree with that take at all (apart from maybe considering a strike). People constantly have to learn and adjust, and kids even more so than adults. I don’t think anyone would say “oh, it’s too late for them now to learn how to drive, they got so used to the adults doing it”. Just because this is something they’d *prefer* to not do doesn’t mean they are *unable* to get used to doing it.
It’s also not like if they don’t take care of some more of the dishes by now this is something they’ll never learn or have to do, it just means that whoever lives with them at some point is stuck having the same fight. And since Swistle is bothered by it right now, right now is a good a time as any to change things up.
but expecting them to just change something they’ve seen their whole lives is unfortunate. Its a pattern I see in these stories. Expecting change instead of insisting on it
But insisting means that the burden is still on [whoever is already being ground down by the mental load].
I think a lot of this is just how a person is wired: I have three kids who were raised in the same house by the same parents, and one of them is just notably more observant and considerate than the other two. None of them is terrible, which I credit to my efforts of unpacking things and explaining why The Way Things Are is not The Way They Should Be. But at some point, I’ll be done and will just turn to the part where the little red hen says, “You had your chance. No cake for you.” Only not about cake.
Surely no one here thinks that this is the first time dishes, or chores, have come up with these children. Probably the five hundred millionth time. It just gets exhausting to nag, is all, and to deal with weaponized incompetence (or even real incompetence), and to insist for the five hundred million and first time.
The person who had the next chronological birthday? That way you don’t have to wash the pan for a year by the time it’s your birthday. Though I don’t know what you do about twins.
When I was growing up, we had days that each kid had to do the dishes/clean the kitchen. That way we were only responsible every 4 days.
Bake your cake in a disposable cake pan, then it is no longer an issue.
This may not work in a household with twins and college students, but you could say that the person with the next birthday should wash the pan, as an incentive for you to bake them a cake when it’s their birthday.
But I would probably just buy a dishwasher-safe pan, if you have a dishwasher.
I haven’t yet read the comments so maybe someone said this, but I need to go to bed myself. ANYWAY. I’d be tempted to use your tule and then add “and if the person who baked or whose birthday it is does their dishes before it gets washed after soaking, they get to draw a name of the others and x” where x is an undesirable consequence. Cake pan in their bed. They wash that person’s dishes for a week, they owe the person who baked and the person whose birthday it is $5 each. Whatever might work for your fam.
Good luck. I don’t know how to get my family to do anything without me harassing them. So probably not a great advice giver.
Ever since covid quarantine, we have a chore chart for the kids. Note- we don’t have a dishwasher. So whoever had dishes would wash the cake pan. I will provide some guidance if the pan requires any TLC.
Some additional notes: whoever eats the last piece SHOULD be the one to soak the pan. If there is an evening where there are excessive dishes, I will step in and share some of the burden. I HATE washing silverware so I will gladly take care of a few pans and the assigned dishwasher can take care of the rest. The kids get a small allowance for completing household chores, the chart rotates so you aren’t always stuck with the same chore. It isn’t like my house is pristine but the basics get done more consistently.
In my house: DH. We all have certain jobs we have to do. Currently I’m pregnant and not doing my share but usually:
DH: kitchen (though I do “clean as I go”). Weedwacking. Approx half of cooking. Approx have of driving kids around. Sweeping floors. Hard phone calls (banks, lawyers etc.)
Me: bathroom, lawns, laundry. Half of cooking and kid driving. Bills and grocery shopping.
Kids (primary school age): emptying dishwasher, tidying lounge, putting groceries and own laundry away, other tasks (eg folding or hanging laundry) as requested. Some cooking and gardening during the holidays.
The person who eats the last piece of cake puts the pan in the sink to soak. Whoever is responsible for the next kitchen clean up has to also wash the cake pan, even if it is the turn of the birthday boy or girl. We have non-stick cake pans so it’s an easy task, especially after soaking.
I just realized that given the ages and varying schedules of your kids it is likely that your family is mostly doing a “feed yourself and then clean up your own mess” system, rather than nightly family meals where one or two people are assigned kitchen clean up each night. In my house if that were the case then it is 1000% guaranteed no one would touch that cake pan and I would be the one to clean it. In this case I agree with your rule completely: last cake eater soaks pan, first non-birthday person to do their own dishes should also clean the pan. This is where I would give my family the “we are a team” speech about how we pitch in to hep even if a mess isn’t technically “ours”. The likelihood that this rule would be followed without me griping or nagging is 0-5%.
At ours the person who is washing dishes that night would do it. If it was particularly aggregious (enough to need overnight soaking) the person on breakfast dishes would be left with it.
Dishes are allocated by parents on a pretty laissez faire methodology base loosely on who cooked, how much there is to do and who is working/sport/ has exams. Sometimes we split it up if there’s a lot. Mostly one washes, one dries and one wipes the bench and table. Sometimes one person does the lot.
I find the youngest in the rotation tends to complain, the others have already worked out it’s easier to just muck in quickly (this was true when it was each kids turn to be youngest).
Edited to add – if a baker has been ridiculous and used everything and washed nothing, in that case that child gets returned to the kitchen to wash the pan (often with my (mum) help if I take pity)
In my household, I am the one more likely to bake something, but dishes are my husband’s job, so he would wash the pan unless he asked me to help for some reason. Our policy is that you are assigned the *management* of a task, not necessarily the work itself, so he is the boss of meal planning, cooking dinner, and doing dishes, but he asks for help or delegates as needed.
in our house, the person who cooks does not have to clean, but it’s expected that they will put stuff in the sink to soak. For a pan like that one, the person who cooked dinner the night the pan was finally empty would not have to clean the pan, and whoever was cleaning up would have to clean the pan, no matter who baked or whose birthday it had been.
I only had the one kid, and we have a dishwasher, but the things I emphasized over and over with him was 1) “everyone in the household benefits from being in the household and everyone in the household contributes to the household” and
2) “Someday you’re going to be a grownup living somewhere else and you need to know how to (do X chore that he hates) because you will be the only one available to do it.”
This absolutely did not prevent whining, moaning, gnashing of teeth, or me needing to nag.
But it did get me a phone call his first month of college to let me know that neither of his roommates knew how to cook and how he thought their parents had committed malpractice.
Interesting. I say, to hell with the soaking if the cake is eaten with dinner. The people who are doing the dishes that night also do the cake pan, regardless of whether it has soaked. If it’s put in the sink with soapy water at the beginning of the washing up process, it will be ready to scrub. If not, do it anyways. Or, you could bake only cupcakes. Of course, if the cake has been eaten at 9:00 at night, then the pan will sit until the next evening.
Oh! I have a brilliant idea and this is what I actually do. When the cake is small enough to put on a large dinner plate, it gets transferred to the dinner plate, wrapped in saran wrap and the pan gets washed that evening with the dinner dishes. And yes, last person to eat cake, say for breakfast, washes the pan if it’s still in the pan. The soaking option gets negated as it’s a source of shirking ones duty. NO MORE SOAKING!
CC Donna, you’re talking my language.
In my actual house any specific solution would also result in a bunch of people playing chicken with their dishes. And because some people make cake and some people don’t there’s no good/fair way to have the cake baker clean the pan. MY solution which works sometimes is to just point blank ask one of them to clean the pan. No one is that helpful and they know it so they are less reluctant to help when asked directly because they know they basically have a good deal.
The whole story reminds me of the time when I was very pre-family-of-my-own and my old babysitter (who now had a teenager) said “no one ever thinks about the fact that when they have a baby they’ll end up with a teenager” and I thought she was referring to the swift passage of time but I now think (frequently) about how my sweet babies grew into teenagers. I like them usually, and they can be sweet, but now that they are taller than me I expect them to act like adult me and they just don’t. I try constantly to recall how annoying I was at the same age. I am very glad I have had time enough as an adult to make it up to to my own mother.
if i don’t care about the pan then i’ll toss the pan and leftover cake into the garbage. if i have the desire or need to bake i always ask myself “if i end up having to wash this gunked up pan am i ok with that?” if the answer is no then i use a disposable pan or i don’t bake or i buy something already made. if someone else made the cake and i enjoyed it then i got no probs soaking and washing the pan.
We have a dishwasher and I typically bake sheet cakes in a glass pan, so in my household it should be that the person who eats the last piece of cake should put the pan in the dishwasher. However, everyone seems somehow to weaponize their incompetence at loading dishwashers, so it ends up being: one person finishes the cake, and I put it in the correct spot in the dishwasher. This is not the big deal for me that it would be if the pan had to be hand washed. I HATE washing dishes, so what generally happens for almost all non-dishwasher safe dishes that I cooked in is I’ll put stuff to soak, then command someone to wash it when I’m simultaneously pointing out a dish that is undeniably theirs to wash and telling them that it has to be washed forthwith.
I maybe should have mentioned that this comes up here for every birthday because I have to bake the cakes for birthdays. My son is allergic to eggs and the only decent egg-free cake or cupcake option here is homemade since the specialty bakeries cost the earth and produce an inferior product.
I just wash all the cake pans in our house. I do the cooking and then all the dishes, because I like them done. Trying to force someone else to do it takes WAY WAY more energy than just washing the stupid things myself. I am attempting to make the teens clean their own kitchen messes, but they say “I will” and then 12 hours later their Mac n Cheese pot is still “soaking” in the sink and I have to threaten dire consequences to get it washed. Such a drag that my only choices seem to be Full Time Maid or Full Time Nag.
Yes this – “Full Time Maid or Full Time Nag.” GAH.
Because the real issue is everyone taking Swistle for granted and assuming she’ll do it, and because it’s probably too late to change the kids’ behaviors (there is hope for Paul…probably, if he wants to stay married), I would probably remove myself from the equation entirely. The kids can bake it, the kids can clean it up, and the only thing Swistle does is enjoy cake, if there is one, as a reward for 20 years of doing this job.
THIS
Yes!
Also, I’m curious, Swistle. Who makes YOUR cake? Do you make your own?
Either Paul makes it, or else I choose a birthday dessert that can be purchased, like a store-bought ice cream cake, or ice cream sundaes, or pastries from a bakery I’ve wanted to try.
Who washes the pan when Paul makes it?
I love baking and I made my own one year and it made me very depressed even though it was my idea. Never again!
In our house it would be me, and I’d also be the one who did the baking. For me, cake is part of the family’s celebration that I organized and executed. If I got too unhappy about any part of it, it would take away from the spirit too much for me. I think if the clean-up bothered me, I’d buy a cake from the grocery store and call it done. Or not do a cake at all.
I’m pretty much of the mind that if I’m the one doing the buying, planning, organizing, etc, then whatever it is is going to be done in a way that I’m either happy with or at least willing to tolerate. It’s why I never make any of the Thanksgiving foods that I personally dislike.
Well, now I am hungry for cake. Also? This has reminded me that I never saw any of my brothers doing anything in the kitchen other than eating. That being said, I never had to milk the cows. When the last brother moved out the cows we’re hauled to the sale barn. As the boys were the major consumers of dairy products, that seemed logical, I suppose. Off to bake a cake!
I’m sitting on the back porch with my 75 year old mother right now and I just asked her this question and her answer was, “I don’t know, probably the women” and I fully LOL’d because AIN’T THAT THE TRUTH.
Truth!!
Also, I’ll add to my pitch for just asking/telling someone to do it. This is a way to even the score for the helpful child. Don’t ask that one (in Swistle’s case, don’t ask/tell Elizabeth).
In my house, whoever cooks does not clean – and the cleaner can clean or can make the kids clean, that’s their call. I usually cook, so my husband usually cleans. We are both too lazy about making the children clean even though they do so without complaint. However, I’m the only baker in the house, and I clean my baking mess as I go – and finish up after – because it is such a big mess. I like baking so I sort of see it as part of the process. They eat it, though! Cake leftovers get deposited into Tupperware, so the cake pan itself is always part of that evenings clean up, and its done by whomever is cleaning. Also, parchment paper is great but silicone cake liners (Silpat is the name brand but there are also knockoffs) are even better and I never make a cake without one unless it’s springform. No soaking necessary and your cake won’t fall apart on removal! Also cake wraps will make your cake bake evenly and not dome, although that isn’t relevant to cleaning.
Whoever happens to be doing the dishes/loading the dishwasher next. This only works if there is some division of that responsibility or complete ownership I guess. At my house, I typically do this but my husband does it when he’s home (commercial airline pilot so I don’t have the luxury of leaving things for him to do all the time). As our kids get older we are adding more responsibilities for them but the same plan will, in theory, work. If you are on kitchen clean-up duty, that means everything! Not just what you used yourself.