1) Limit yourself to ONLY 4 knives, forks, soup spoon, dinner and soup plates
just wash 'em up each day, less to do, less stress as the amount, feelings of "Oh no not that much!" when facing a big pile is bad for us, as pathetic as that sounds ot those not that bad it really is an issue.
2) Buy and use plastic cutlery and paper plates, this saves MUCH effort
be careful, lot of plastic cutlery is crap and even dangerous! I found the best ones are those made form CLEAR plastic
I do understand yer problem
most of my dishes have sat unwashed for several months (well I soaked 'em in bleach at start to clean it off but they've sat their undone for nearly 4 months)
gawd damn humiliating, self reinforcement sort of, gets you so down, thought of doing 'em makes ya worse etc etc
pathetic, but...that's life with this shit
hate it I'm kind of person who doesn't mind things getting in a mess, but hates them STAYING a mess, ya know?
So would always have a good "clean up" every few days, normally
Once upon a time, my mum decided she wanted concrete slabs put down in garden, as front was a swamp (builders 50 years ago had dumped clay and rubble there when making the houses, so it trapped water,and there's several underground springs/burns nearby would take major work to dig that out so slabbing it over was easier)
So she got concrete slabs delivered, but she out did herself, thinking to get good cheap slabs, she got them from a council lorry base for the cleansing works (ie, rubbish vans) that was shutting down
slabs were 2'x3' 2 inch thick
high density (as they were meant for heavy vehicles to drive over in the yard
)...think they weight about 180lbs each? had to carry 56 of 'em round our backyard...FEK!!!
felt like I was in one of them "Land of the Pharaohs" type things, whips cracking slaves endlessly toiling to lift massive chunks of rock up the pyramid, hehe
now dishes is too much, blech