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Dishwashing! For the True Heroes of the Flow! :)

Dishwashing at the House of Tea is an essential way of helping the tea flow. One of the major bottlenecks in the tea flow is the lack of clean/fresh cups!

As essential for the tea flow, it is also important that it is done properly, so everyones' health and well-being be preserved to our best effort.

For this purpose, there are some usages to know and precautions to take:

IMPORTANT: in order to minimize risks of contamination, we adopt the strict following protocol:

  • ONE OR TWO PERSON(s) WASH(ES) ONE ENTIRE BATCH of cups, instead of everybody attempting -sometimes slopily- to wash theirs, in order to minimize the “number of hands” in the wash, and potential for mistakes.
  • Dishwashing is made USING DISPOSABLE GLOVES.
  • No food-stained or other non-tea-related greasy items be left in the soak/wash, in order to make the wash easier.
  • We attempt to change the dishwashing water(s) as often as possible. See how to help with the water cycle.

A Dishwashing (work-)flow for the tea cups

Teapots deserve a special treatment!.

Teapots should not be considered “dirty” once used, and do not need to be washed like the cups (it would actually be cumbersome and inefficient with such setup).

So in order to recycle/refresh the teapots:

  • fill them with approx 1/5-1/4 of boiling water that you carefuly “rotate” inside for a few seconds.
  • discard the water in the used water disposal container.
  • eventually wipe their handle with hyrdo-alcoholic gel if it reassures you.
  • put back in the inventory of clean items.

(the same applies to tea strainers!)

Our dishwashing consists of 4 different stations/boxes + 1 drying rack:

1/ soaking

This is where it all begins! :)

All used cups are left in the soak box.

It is composed of liquid Marseille soap, which has very strong anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties.

2/ wash

It is composed of Sodium Bicarbonate (aka “Natron” or “baking soda”), in rather strong proportion (about xxxx per liter?), thus making a very basic solution that will kill/wash everything, while leaving no unpleasant taste or smell.

Scrub with dedicated sponge.

3/ rinse

A rinse in fresh/clear water.

4/ dry

Cups are disposed on the drying racks. We hopefully can change the table cloths on which they rest regularly often that they dont stay soaked.

If energy is available and/or if clean cups are immediately missing, they could eventually be hand-dried…