On routines, everyday knowledge, and the surprising difficulty of using a dishcloth

“No.”

Sometimes I talk to myself.

“No, no.”

That is probably not unusual. Other people talk to plants, cars, or computers. I do the latter as well. Usually, though, only after the computer has started it.

“No. No. NO!”

I am standing in the kitchen, looking at a dishcloth.

That alone should not really be a cause for despair. Dishcloths are among the less spectacular achievements in human history. Nobody builds monuments to them. No child, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, replies, “I want to become a dishcloth researcher.”

Perhaps that is an underrated field of study. Because how much does a person actually need to know in order to use a dishcloth?

First, they need to know that a dishcloth can absorb dirt. That is its function. Then they need to understand that the dirt does not cease to exist in the process. It merely changes location. That is how it works. And finally, they need to conclude that once a dishcloth has absorbed dirt, it should be rinsed or washed and then hung up in such a way that it can dry.

Function, mechanism, and proper use.

It sounds ridiculous when you write it down. Until you find a dishcloth that has been lying around wet and crumpled in its own juices for an indeterminate amount of time, quietly decomposing. At that point, the theory acquires a certain practical relevance.

These days, I throw dishcloths like that away. Not out of any lack of respect for their life’s work. Quite the opposite. Some of them have probably already produced life forms of their own which, given sufficient observation time, might qualify for species protection.

Inner values.

The real problem, however, is not that they lie there.

They are used again.

They are used to wipe pots, pans, plates, cutlery, glasses, and cups – at least in those cases where the use of a dishcloth apparently cannot be avoided altogether. Whatever is inside the dishcloth does not disappear.

It gets some exercise.

With some glasses and cups, the interesting question then arises whether their peculiar patina was already there before this treatment. Plates bearing what might best be described as Braille discourage excessively close inspection anyway.

One develops routines.

I take a glass out of the cupboard and carry it to the sink. Not because I have first established that it is dirty. I prefer not to establish anything at all. Washing it without prior inspection serves both hygiene and peace of mind.

After that, the glass may touch my mouth.

Not before.

Because some of the items treated in this way are put back into the kitchen cupboard while still wet. This is the point at which my willingness to embrace cultural diversity reaches certain limits. I do not want to eat from those plates. I do not want to eat anything prepared in those pots. And I do not want to debate whether something is clean merely because, at some point, a dishcloth was involved.

A dishcloth, after all, is not a religious sacrament. Mere contact with one does not confer purity upon an object.

As far as I can remember, nobody has ever handed me an instruction manual for dishcloths. I certainly cannot recall attending a lesson entitled:

The Household Dishcloth: An Introduction to Function, Mechanism, and Proper Drying Procedures.

Perhaps I was ill that day.

And yet, at some point, I must have learned it: by watching, imitating, being told, or simply by discovering that things left wet and crumpled for long enough eventually develop qualities one would not necessarily describe as “fresh.”

At some point, nobody needed to tell me what to do anymore. Individual experiences had become a coherent understanding.

And that is where my bewilderment begins.

Because I live with someone for whom certain things that seem completely self-evident to me are apparently anything but self-evident. This does not concern dishcloths alone. It concerns cloths in general. Toilet brushes. Crockery. Pet bowls.

For reasons of youth protection and personal psychological hygiene, I would prefer not to go into unnecessary detail regarding the toilet brush. It is sufficient to observe that its mere presence beside a toilet does not constitute a cleaning procedure.

A fire extinguisher does not put out a fire merely by hanging on the wall either.

The fact that I moved here in the first place had very little to do with my present-day research interest in dishcloths. My partner was already living in another flat in the same building. After my children had moved out, my previous home had become very quiet. There were also perfectly mundane financial considerations. At the time, moving into a shared flat seemed an entirely reasonable solution.

There were not yet sufficient long-term data on the consequences of this decision.

When I moved in, the kitchen was in a condition that made renovation seem less like an aesthetic choice and more like an act of self-defence.

I was still optimistic then.

The existing grime, I was told, largely dated back to the previous occupant. That seemed plausible enough. So I renovated the kitchen and proceeded on an assumption that seemed entirely self-evident to me: if something is clean, tidy, and freshly renovated, people will treat it differently.

I had even been warned. By my partner. She advised me to paint the walls black from the outset. A clean kitchen, she said, would make no difference to the way it was treated.

I thought she was exaggerating.

I lacked the long-term data she already possessed.

Today, the kitchen cupboard has been treated with linseed oil so that at least the wood does not absorb everything it may be subjected to over the course of its existence.

One learns.

Just not always what one originally hoped to learn.

Looking back, I am less interested in who was right. What interests me more is my own certainty at the time: I had assumed that changing the environment would also change the way people behaved within it.

That, too, was something I had taken for granted.

My assumption.

And then there is time.

Especially time.

Because while certain everyday activities regularly leave me wondering how two adults can arrive at such radically different ideas about function and purpose, there is one area in which my flatmate is vastly superior to me:

Regularity.

You could set your watch by him.

At 4:32 p.m., it is time to go shopping.

Not around half past four. Not sometime in the late afternoon.

4:32 p.m.

I did not invent this time. Life occasionally has the better sense of humour.

This would not be particularly remarkable if fresh bread, vegetables, or other foods were bought every day – things whose properties might at least explain the need for a daily shopping trip. But what is usually bought are ready meals.

Almost always.

In other words, precisely those remarkable products of the food industry whose principal cultural achievement consists in surviving for astonishing lengths of time without requiring anyone to visit a supermarket on their behalf.

One could buy three of them at once. Or thirty. With sufficient appetite for risk, one might even purchase food for two consecutive days.

Modern preservation technology offers possibilities of which our ancestors could only have dreamed.

Apparently, however, the point is not exclusively to buy something.

Shopping happens because now is Shopping Time.

At 4:32 p.m.

And this is where free will begins to interest me.

When, exactly, is the decision to go shopping made? At 4:31 p.m.? In the morning? Years ago?

Or is it still being made at all?

There are actions we decided upon at some point and which thereafter continue more or less independently. Not because we choose them afresh every day, but because today follows yesterday, and yesterday followed the day before.

There is nothing unusual about that in itself. I do not brush my teeth every morning after a careful philosophical deliberation either.

The question is what happens when reality deviates from the template.

What happens if the shopping trip is delayed one day? A traffic jam, a flat tyre, an act of God?

I hope I have my notebook ready.

Dinner follows the clock as well. Something will sooner be thrown together quickly than dinner be allowed to arrive several minutes late because a more elaborate meal takes longer to prepare. After all, one can never know what might happen if dinner were served six minutes behind schedule.

The Earth’s rotation might be disrupted.

I am not prepared to take that risk lightly.

Then comes television. Certain programmes. Certain routines. Reliably recurring comments about reliably recurring television content.

There is something reassuring about that, at least. Other people have to check the news in the morning to find out whether the world still exists. Here, apparently, it is enough to establish that the same television programme can still be complained about for exactly the same reasons.

A regular visitor also fits into this daily routine with a degree of precision that might make public transport operators envious. At around 8:09 p.m., he goes to the toilet. At 8:13 p.m., he leaves the house.

I do not know this because we once sat down together and devised a timetable.

I know it because it happens.

Again and again.

Systems, as we know, become interesting when something fails to work as expected.

For example, when the toilet is already occupied.

You hear footsteps. You know what is about to happen. So you call out:

“Occupied!”

That should convey all the necessary information. The toilet is occupied. Another human being is currently inside it. Waiting would be one conceivable response.

But apparently the door handle must first be consulted.

It reliably confirms what the word “occupied” has already communicated. I have often wondered what additional information it provides.

Perhaps the human voice does not enjoy the same scientific reputation in this household as a door handle. Or perhaps the question is not whether the toilet is occupied at all.

The door handle might be answering a different question:

Has the person in there actually locked the door?

I find that possibility more disturbing. The first question would be settled by a simple yes. The second raises follow-up questions whose empirical investigation I do not wish to support.

I am, after all, sitting on the toilet.

That is why I lock the door. Consistently. A locked door does not indicate a lack of openness. It merely prevents scientific curiosity from going too far.

I still do not know what the rattling of the door handle means.

And that ignorance matters.

I can observe. I can wonder. I can try to recognise patterns.

But I cannot see inside another person’s head.

Sometimes, therefore, I simply stand there in amazement.

And sometimes I do not.

Sometimes I stand in the kitchen and say:

“No. No. NO!”

Because all of this would amount to a charming collection of human peculiarities if it had no consequences.

It does not always have no consequences.

We have animals. A dog, a female cat, and a tomcat.

No vultures.

No hyenas.

This zoological distinction will become important.

They all get food in bowls. Again, everything initially appears simple: animal is hungry, human puts down food, animal eats.

An animal, however, does not necessarily eat everything simply because a human has decided that a bowl should remain permanently full. Sometimes food is left behind.

Then it remains there for longer.

Flies, on the other hand, appear to have fewer reservations.

They recognise opportunities.

Eventually, there is still a full bowl sitting there. Except that it no longer contains anything the animals are prepared to eat.

Something in it is moving now instead.

One could argue that this has actually made the bowl fuller. Mathematically, that may even be correct. It does not solve the problem.

Because the dog and cats are still a dog and cats.

Not hyenas.

Not vultures.

Whatever is now living in the bowl, however, appears rather pleased about this state of affairs.

I have cleaned that up repeatedly as well.

And this is where the curiosity ends for me.

Because a full bowl is not the same thing as a well-fed animal.

You can starve in front of a full bowl.

If the contents have spoiled and the animal will no longer eat them, the bowl is not full of food.

It is full of waste.

The maggots, admittedly, appear quite satisfied.

I have tried to explain this. Not once. Not twice.

Often.

Smaller portions. Check whether the food has been eaten. Remove anything that has not been eaten. Clean the bowl.

Function, mechanism, and proper use.

The dishcloth all over again.

At some point, bewilderment is no longer enough. Anyone who repeatedly has to deal with the consequences of someone else’s actions cannot maintain the detached composure of an ethnologist forever.

He is disgusted. He gets annoyed. He gets angry.

And eventually he stands in the kitchen and says:

“No. No. NO!”

For a long time, I thought my anger arose entirely from what I saw in front of me. Now I think part of it comes from an expectation that keeps being disappointed:

Surely everyone knows that.

And that sentence is suspicious.

Who is “everyone”? Why should everyone know it? When did they learn it?

My mistake may have been assuming that things we take for granted are, in fact, universally taken for granted. The expression itself practically makes the claim.

But where do these assumptions come from?

What we like to call “common sense” consists to a considerable extent of thousands of small things we have learned, observed, tried out, and connected with one another over the course of our lives.

A wet dishcloth needs to dry. Dirt does not disappear merely because you spread it around. A toilet brush does not fulfil its social responsibilities merely by being present beside the toilet. Nor is it purely an art installation. Spoiled food does not become fresh again if you wait long enough. And when somebody calls “Occupied!” from behind a locked door, the door handle is unlikely to offer a dissenting opinion when subsequently consulted.

All of that seems self-evident to me.

But why?

Because it is logical?

Or does it seem logical because I have learned to connect cause and effect in precisely this way?

That, at any rate, is the more interesting question.

Because the same person whose handling of a dishcloth makes me question the existence of universal everyday logic possesses, in another area, a consistency that is entirely alien to me.

I could not live according to the same pattern every day. I do not want to know that today will happen because it happened yesterday, because it happened the day before, and will therefore happen again tomorrow.

But that, too, is something I take for granted.

Repetition can provide security. The template that would constrain me may serve as a handrail for someone else.

And somewhere between template and handrail lies what we call free will.

Not the grand decision between good and evil.

At first, perhaps, merely the ability to interrupt a routine.

Not going shopping at 4:32 p.m. today.

Rinsing out the dishcloth.

Removing the pet bowl.

Which, admittedly, brings me straight back to my own wishes.

The world does not need to look different every day. Most of the time, it does not. The same houses stand on the same streets, the same kitchen awaits us in the morning, and even the supermarket is unlikely to have changed location overnight.

That is precisely why we can make a difference between today and yesterday ourselves.

We do not eat exactly the same thing every day. We have different conversations, listen to different music, read different texts, sometimes take a different route. Not because the world forces us to, but because between what happens again and what we make of it, there remains a certain amount of room.

Sometimes freedom is no more than that small gap between habit and action in which a different choice remains possible.

And it is precisely there that disgust can turn back into curiosity.

Not because a rotting dishcloth becomes any less rotten as a result. Not because I intend to greet the next maggot-infested pet bowl enthusiastically with, “Ah! New research material!”

There are limits to scientific dedication.

But I can ask myself what it is I am actually observing.

What happens when an established routine becomes stronger than a changed situation? How does everyday knowledge develop? Why do some people move immediately from observing an effect to taking the next logical action, while others stop once the individual step has been completed? And how much of what I regard as reason is merely my own template, practised for decades?

I do not know.

And that has become more interesting than my earlier attempts to insist on finding an answer.

I only know that eventually the familiar time will arrive again.

4:31 p.m.

Preparations begin.

4:32 p.m.

The door opens.

Shopping happens.

Tomorrow, shopping will happen again. And probably the day after tomorrow as well.

A ready meal will be purchased whose best-before date lies somewhere in a future in which both of us will long since have forgotten what annoyed us today.

At first, I mostly wondered about all this. Later, much of it made me angry.

These days, sometimes I simply think:

It is 4:32 p.m.

Of course it is time to go shopping.

And somewhere, there is a dishcloth.

I hope it is drying.

But I would not bet on it.

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