Time / Calculator

How much time do you spend washing dishes?

Set your household, your meals and how long the washing-up takes. The maths is shown underneath — no hidden assumptions.

01 / People in household

02people

02 / Meals per day

01meals / day

03 / Days per week

07days / week

04 / Minutes washing per meal

25min / meal

Output

Minutes / week: 175
Hours / month: 12.6
Hours / year: 152

Value of your time ($/hr)

Cost per place setting

$5.21

≈ $3,717 of your time a year across 14 place settings a week (meals/day × days × people), plus ≈ 10.5¢ water, energy and soap per setting. Estimate; default $24.51/hr is the US median wage.

≈ 76 feature films (2 h each) a year
≈ 19.0 working days (8 h) a year
≈ 202 albums (45 min) a year

FORMULA

min/week = meals/day × days/week × min/meal

= 1 × 7 × 25 = 175

h/month = min/week × 52 ÷ 12 ÷ 60 · h/year = min/week × 52 ÷ 60

ASH can eliminate the washing step for meals where you choose disposable dinnerware.

Get ASH every month Shop ASH

Method

How the numbers work.

By default, minutes per meal means the total time your household spends washing up after one meal — clearing, rinsing, loading, hand-washing and drying. People in the household does not change the result unless you switch on minutes are per person.

Defaults start at about 25 minutes a day, the average from a 2021 Kelton survey for Birds Eye. Cost per place setting = your time (minutes ÷ 60 × $/hour) ÷ place settings washed, plus ≈ 10.5¢ of water, energy and soap per setting (ENERGY STAR handwashing figures). The default hourly value is the US median wage, $24.51. See the cost of washing dishes for the full method.

A month is 52 ÷ 12 weeks (about 4.33). A year is 52 weeks. Equivalents divide hours per year by 2 hours per film, 8 hours per working day and 45 minutes per album.

Sources · figures marked ≈ are estimates