Poll #1371551 Dish… - Diane Trout

I've never had a kitchen where I could put away the dish rack, but in theory, if I could somehow cause it to be somewhere else, and free up the counter space it occupied, and reappear when I needed it, that would be great. But in practice, I always leave it out empty for the next round of dishes. (But you said "in my ideal home, so. :^)

For me, it depends on the mechanics of it. What I ideally want, in complete fantasy land, is for the dish rack to be there, empty, whenever I want to put anything into it, and for it to be somewhere else whenever I don't need it. It's a little hard to imagine how it would be that magical in reality: If I were actually stashing it in a cupboard, I'd have to open the cupboard and pull it out when I needed it, which would be a pain, and I wouldn't be able to use that cupboard for anything else (and dish rack storage seems unlikely to be my top priority for cupboard space).

So, your girlfriend may think you're crazy to fantasize about magical vanishing dish racks. :^)

Where's the "throw it in the dirty dish rack pile and go buy a new one again" option? ;)

But then the towel goes into the "dirty towels for the trash pile" and you have to buy more towels... ;)

You've seen our dish drainers, on an open wire shelf over the sink. They're out of the way so there's no need to put them anywhere. :)

When you've got a kitchen as small and poorly equipped as ours, visual clutter is unavoidable. Oh, for a kitchen large enough for two people to work in and put everything away!

Really? Those are the only options? Where is your imagination? 'Cuz in my ideal home, the dish rack would be actively looking for dirty dishes on the counter, and when it found some, it'd clean them, dry them, put them away, and then go back to perching on top of the microwave, patiently watching for the next dirty dish to be placed on the counter.

....because, see, that's my ideal house. You peeps have such paltry ideal houses. ;-)