I was cleaning the kitchen this morning.

(Just so you know, if my husband is reading this at work right now . . . he probably just cheered loudly.  I let busy-ness trump my Daily Checklist for two days, and it was bad.)

As I washed the burned rice off of the bottom of my new stainless steel skillet, I started to stick it in the dishwasher when it looked like that picture above.

Even though I was fully aware the the dishwasher would not get that stuff off.

And even though I knew I would end up scrubbing it again after it went through the dishwasher.

And . . . even though I knew space was at a premium in the dishwasher and that skillet going in there would mean something else that could truly benefit from a dishwasher-washing . . . would have to wait.

Thankfully, my brilliant I-get-to-blog-because-I’m-blogging-about-cleaning plan worked.

My writer-brain spoke to my Slob Brain (she gets capital letters because she’s generally in charge) and said, “Hey! What’s your problem? Putting that skillet in there is beyond pointless.  Go ahead and scrub it as well as you can and call it clean!”

So rude.

But so right.

The stainless steel pans are a new thing for me.  Obviously, I need something a little stronger than my beloved microfiber dishcloths if I want them to sparkle like new.  But, they’re clean if I’ve scrubbed them until all that’s left is the discoloration.

I spent less-than-30-seconds to get the pan clean.

Putting it in the dishwasher would have been procrastination.  Avoidance.

I know better.

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Two reminders:

Don’t forget that my easy-to-download e-book of all my printable housekeeping checklists is on sale for only 2.00 through tomorrow.

I have completely forgotten about the Decluttering Update for December!  I’ll put it up tomorrow, and I’d love to have you join in!  Feel free to write a post about what you’ve already decluttered in January, what you did total in 2011, or any decluttering post and link it up!  Or write a novel in the comments!