Art of doing ‘bartan’ (utensils)
scope
This article is applicable to people who are learning how to clean utensils by hand (not in a dishwasher)
This is more relevant to Indians
This is based on 10 days extensive cleaning experience
keywords
Holy place == the sink
Daemons == hard to clean utensils, which are used for cooking like pressure cooker, haandi
QA == Quality Assurance
guidelines
keep it wet
Ensure you give instructions (or plead) to your folks to pour water in a cup when they offer it to the holy place. Also, request your cook to put water in those daemons. Suggest taking rounds of the holy place throughout the day as I bet your instructions will be ignored and you will have to wet them yourself.
glass is better than steel
Replace your steel utensils like plates, katoris (bowls) etc with glassware / bone-china if you have. You would most likely find them in the cutlery exhibition corner of your home, reserved exclusively for guests. The logic is that these are much easier to clean than steel ones but comes with greater financial risk. Avoid taking out those ones gifted by your in-laws if any else you would hard time when they are no more (utensils not in-laws). I bet these utensils will thank you for taking out from their lock-down.
label and reuse
This one is just an idea, I couldn’t implement though. Say if you label a glass per house member for water intake, you shouldn’t end up with thrice the number of glasses in the holy place.
ban knives from sink
This is a safety hazard warning. You don’t want to get bitten by one of these while you are doing it. To be fair to knives, they believe in monogamy. Suggest keeping them out of the holy place, somewhere else and first wash them before washing anything else much like we Hindus worship Ganesha before worshiping any other God.
getting ready for the action
dressing up for the occasion
This is based on weather condition. Since I am based in Mumbai, the heat loving moisture crazy city, I prefer topless for this job - absolutely nothing on top. Keep in mind your belly diameter, your body hairs, view of your kitchen from outside, and of course family members' reaction to your attire or lack of it. The idea is to feel the air while you are at it, and it is easy to just wipe it off later once you are done.
music playlist
Use ear-phones / head-phones. This will help you ease the pain. Ensure you have your own playlist. You don’t want to end up in a situation where suddenly Honey Singh starts shouting and you can’t skip it. I don’t want you to blame me for smashing some glassware which you took out from that cupboard based on my earlier advice.
all lights, all fans
Trust me, you need all the lights you have. A single spot is enough to tarnish your credibility. About fans, it again depends on the weather. For Mumbai, I suggest turning on any damn thing that rotates in the kitchen i.e. ceiling fan, table fan, exhaust fan (not mixer-grinder though).
avoid meltdown while cooking is in progress
If you are doing it while someone is cooking, you have to switch off the fan, rest is up to you if you want to have a meltdown while you are at it.
swiss-army knife - specific tool for specific purpose
I use three kinds of scrubs - gentle, rough and monster-mesh. Only the gentle one is allowed to take holy dip in the liquid soap. Other two are banned from it. The rough one is precursor to the gentle one and only used on daemons. The monster-mesh which is made of steel mesh, capable enough to scrape out oil from earth, is only used on those black burn spots which are the result of excellent cooking techniques of your cook (in this case mostly your better-half). Scrubbing these spots with monster-mesh helps getting rid of all your frustrations. You can actually feel it when these spots start fading away.
liquid soap is better than solid
This one is no brainer - if you can get it use liquid soap as the solid soap tastes much worse.
make space
You need to have enough space to keep the clean utensils. You have to make this space before you start, you can’t do this while you are at it.
divide and conquer - batch processing
Normally it is a three step process - rinse, clean and rinse. You do the first two steps for all and then start rinsing all. Now, depending on the size of the sink, number of utensils and available space to keep clean ones, you may want to do multiple cycles of above.
conserve water
During Rinse + Clean steps, the water flow from tap should be minimal. During the last rinse step, try to optimize the water flow.
identify priority
This is important. If space is a constraint, you may want to prioritize the bigger ones. Also, you may want to prioritize expensive ones earlier - yes this is ‘classist’ but it is a pragmatic suggestion. The breakage risk is directly proportional to time spent in the holy place. Also, you would want to be done with the expensive ones before Honey Singh starts.
identify criticality
This is very important. You would want to identify which ones demand your unwavering attention and which ones you can go easy with. For example, dishes, spoons and glasses are most critical. These are the ones at high risk of getting caught in QA. Also, these are critical for health reasons, as they come in direct contact with the human mouth. Now there are those which you could go easy with - tawa / kadai i.e. high temperature cooking utensils. Even if they are not 100% clean, heat is there to take care of the leftovers. Also, any utensils in dark colors are difficult to get caught in QA. You may also want to do a second level of optimization by choosing to focus more on a certain area of a utensil e.g. focusing only on one inch area of the glass rim as it is this area that goes in mouth.
after it is done
clean the sink
This for you, you want to start with clean slate in your next round
wash yourself
Best is taking shower but if not possible, wipe yourself and reapply deo.
moisturize hands well
This is very important, else the soap will do wonders to your otherwise soft hands.
enjoy your nirvana time
Follow up story on this:
“Reactions — Art of doing ‘bartan’” by Vimal Bhatt https://link.medium.com/MjXMaNurz5