It was my roommate’s turn to do dishes after dinner, and I noticed, as she was going through, that she was only running things under the hot water, but wasn’t actually using soap.
Me: *Trying for a tactful hint.* “[Roommate], the soap is in the green bottle next to the drying rack.”
Roommate: “Ugh. No, I’m not using soap, not now that I can use water.”
I was never the most assertive person, so I just waited until she’d ‘washed’ everything, put them in the drying rack, and walked off, and then hopped up to wash them properly. I’d gotten out the wash bin and was scrubbing at a plate when she came back.
Roommate: “What did you do?!”
Me: “I’m just giving them an extra scrub with soap. I—”
Roommate: “—Where did all the bubbles come from?”
Me: “Uh… the soap.”
Roommate: “What?! Show me!”
I put a bit of soap on the plate, put it under the water, and scrubbed it around.
Roommate: “Wait, you can do that?”
Me: “Do what?”
Roommate: “Use soap with water.”
I’ll admit, that question sort of broke my brain a bit. I told her yes, finished up the washing, and we sat down to chat a bit.
It got rather personal, so I’m not going to share all of it, but in regards to her question specifically, it turned out that her family ‘didn’t believe in wasting water’, so when her mom would ‘wash the dishes’, she’d do it by putting a drop of soap on them, scrubbing them with a rag, and wiping them off with a different rag, which would, naturally, not really clean it but instead just leave a layer of soap built up on the dish.
My roommate had hated the taste of soap that clung to everything, so the moment she’d gotten to college and away from her parents, she’d shifted over to ‘washing with water rather than soap’ and hadn’t looked back, having never realized that you were supposed to use both.
For a few weeks after that discussion, she insisted on doing all the dishwashing, and would be giggling the entire time as she did it ‘the proper way’.
Related:
A Different Kind Of Soap Opera Drama, Part 2
A Different Kind Of Soap Opera Drama