Ceramic turtles: in your hosts' kitchen, what's safe to do?

Just now I was in my sister's kitchen thinking of Elin Whitney-Smith's advice, given to me long ago: "At someone else's house, you can wash and dry but you can't put away." That's the gist; if you're in a hurry, skip to the pictures.

As a nomad, helping when my hosts are physically present is a snap and also facilitates quality hanging-out time. When they're not around, based on years of experience, here are the safe helping activities:

• Wash dishes by hand and either rack or dry them.
• Put away just the items where you can already see one of the exact same thing in a particular location: silverware and plates and glasses are usually safe.
• If the dishwasher's contents are clean, put away what you can and stack the other clean items in a neat, obvious pile outside the dishwasher. (A dishwasher half unloaded looks like it hasn't been run, causing mental strain. How can you tell? Surfaces feel squeaky; zero food on silverware; standing water on the upside-down tops of the mugs.) 
• If you have emptied the dishwasher, or you're sure its contents are dirty, put items in.
• If there's open food that might want to go in the fridge, put it in (but in plain sight).
• Put lids on containers.
• Wipe the obvious surfaces (including the stove).
• Refresh any water left out for pets.
• If you can see the trash and recycling cans, empty the kitchen and bathroom wastebaskets. 
• Make yourself a cuppa [Australian term] and enjoy having a kitchen to help out in. 

Re housekeeping standards, when staying with others I try for slightly higher than local but not annoyingly so. (Rather than my own low standards, which are a whole 'nother posting.) As a general guideline I don't try to clean anything that it looks like the hosts don't clean. I enjoy polishing andirons but maybe my hosts have worked for years to give them that specific patina: to scrub it off would absolutely be nudgy. Nudgy new nomads are less likely to be asked back.

What, in my experience, is not safe to do?

Put away anything unique that you haven't seen taken out. If there is only one vegetable steaming rack, and you put it somewhere that seems to you like the perfect place, and the next time it's wanted (and the water is already boiling) it takes n minutes to find it, there is a chance that your hosts will spend those minutes calling down imprecations on your head. Especially if this drama actually delays a meal. (Neurotypical people rarely look for things until they need them. If they have spare time they will use it on higher priority tasks than wondering whether Julianne hid or moved anything of theirs yesterday.) Knives and cooking pots are in this category, unless your hosts have a knife block and hooks for the skillets or you can see that all the pots are in the same cupboard. Ditto with most packages of dry food.

Run the dishwasher or feed pets (unless you've been shown how much, what with, and when they prefer it to be done). Mistakes here can do actual harm.

Take out bedroom or office trash baskets. In fact, I try not to enter peoples' bedrooms or offices, unless they invite me in and are present, for reasons of privacy and good boundaries. I have dealt with trash professionally, and if I even look at a trash basket that might possibly hold paper with writing on it, or used lube packets, old habits will kick in. So I don't go near them. (House sitting: another topic.)

Reorganize cupboards or any other existing storage system whatsoever. In my sister's kitchen, my mom only tried this once.

To sum up: when in doubt, I do less. My goal is to reduce / replace work that the hosts would otherwise be doing. If they have to expend any effort cleaning up after my cleaning, I will have failed in my goal. Which brings me to the...

Tale of the bug mugs. My husband requested that our household practice ahimsa specifically in regard to insects. In every room we had a ceramic mug sitting on a postcard (or with a postcard inside it) so that we could quickly put the mug over an insect, slide the postcard behind or below the captive, and use the two together to carry the insect safely outdoors and release it. A dear friend who was visiting collected all the mugs in the kitchen and washed them and threw out the postcards. My husband was distressed but not for very long because I put them all back and fished the postcards (many of which had been selected for their classic "fun to read again" quality) out of the trash and immediately took my friend to the mountains. But it's an example of when in doubt.

As nomads, while cleaning or helping or relaxing, it is fine to enjoy the beautiful objects that our hosts have gathered, which are too heavy or breakable for us as nomads to own but which delight the eyes and hands. For example, while putting away plates just now I found five small ceramic turtles:

 
Damn, they're beautiful! What are they for? Who cares!

I found one turtle straying through the cupboard and the other four inside these nested bowls, so following the like with like principle I put all the turtles together. (After letting them have a little conference.) The bowls are beautiful in themselves:

In the background you can see the dishwasher and dish towels that inspired this posting. Everything in my sister's kitchen is visually nourishing, too.

Comments

[Claire Blum]

Love the ceramic wear -- Deena made me a set in her art class to replace the broken Heath ware. The Blums