Ask HN: What is your system for dirty dishes?

Wash them.

Surprisingly, this. It's a boring, mindless thing to do for the first few hundred times, so you postpone it as far as possible. Of course, the big pile of dirty, possibly disgusting dishes makes it even harder to find the motivation to do it.

After a while, it becomes a routine, and you just do it soon enough that the entire ordeal takes less than 10 minutes. And after even more time, you start enjoying it somewhat, exactly because it's boring and mindless, so it becomes almost meditative. The pleasant sense of achievement afterwards remains, though.

Same here. The longer it sits, the harder it gets, especially by hand.

> during cooking if the recipe allows time for it

A lot of meats, not just beef, can do with a little resting time. Veggies may need to cool just a little. Perfect for at least getting the cooking utensils, pots and pans washed.

I am quite happy with my Dual-Soaper system.

Tools:

1 spray bottle - half dish soap, half water.

1 cup

1 scrubber

The spray bottle is for incidental dishes. By spraying a tiny bit of liquid onto whatever dish you just used, you wash faster while also using less water and soap. Often, you don't even need to get your hands wet. There's no fumbling with slippery dish soap bottles and caps, and no glugs of soap wasted. Try not to inhale the mist though.

The cup is for larger loads. Put a squirt of dish soap in it, then fill with hot / boiled water. Dunk your scrubber into the cup to reload it with hot soapy water whenever necessary.

Some advantages of this: Your sink is kept free - no stoppers needed, or sinks of greasy water with gross food bits in. Also, only a cup or so of water needs to be boiled. The whole process is faster, with less effort.

As others have mentioned, doing dishes immediately is the all around best way to go. The cup and spray bottle really minimize the friction involved in keeping that up throughout the day.

My strategy is to wash them or get them into the loading dishwasher as soon as possible, even if getting the pots and pans sorted out delays dinner by a minute or two. I get the best result by treating it as a part of the mise en place of cooking. I'm not especially tidy, and I live with someone who is also not especially tidy, so I learned quickly that if I ignore the dishes, they don't go away.