I have this thing about washing dishes. Call me a neat freak, but I like my dishes to be washed well. I like them to be submerged in hot, soapy water, scrubbed with a clean dish cloth, and dried with a nice, clean tea towel.

My roommates prefer the bachelor I-don’t-care-if-they’re-really-clean-as-long-as-they-look-it method. That is, smear a little dish soap onto a plate, grab a sponge, wipe, and rinse. Air dry overnight.

When I first moved in, Peter and Kevin owned a total of 1 tea towel (used to wipe spills) and 1 sponge that hadn’t been changed in over 6 months. When I asked whether or not they had a dish cloth, I was shown a rag that looked more like a doyle than anything.

So shopping I went, buying a half dozen or so tea towels and three packages of dish cloths. I also bought one of those neat plastic dishwashing bins to wash the dishes in. Little did I know how much this would upset the two.

At first, they merely ignored the bin, rinsing their dishes around it, and continued to use their moldy, bacteria infested sponge. When the sponge had finally reached the end of its poor long life, they simply reached under the sink for one of my newer ones. They didn’t seem to care that this was the very sponge I used to clean the bathroom. I had to remind them why this wasn’t a good idea.

Then one day as I was about to wash my dishes, I noticed that my dishwashing bin was gone. Disappeared. I couldn’t understand why. Remembering a similar missing bin incident from the week before, I searched the kitchen, and finally found it on top of the toaster.

Confused, I put in back in the sink, and placed the pot which sat there on the counter. After I was done with my chore, I left the kitchen, and went to bed.

The next morning, as I meandered into the kitchen, I found Peter in a huff as he removed my bin from the sink, placed it atop the refrigerator, and slammed his pot back into the sink! I stood there in shock, not understanding what the big deal was. Then it hit me.

"They’re revolting against my bin! "

Peter was intent on making sure MY bin didn’t interfere with HIS "dishwashing" techniques. God forbid he find some foreign object sitting in the sink! God forbid he should have to place his pot inside MY bin!

He didn’t like my bin, and he was going to make sure I knew about it!

So I laughed. I mean really, what’s the deal revolting against a bin?

To this day, I'm the only one who uses it.