Help me, Scullery Fairies, help me!

My mom reports that when I was a little tot and I was about to be punished, I used to call for my hero: "Help me, Popeye, HELP ME!" Alas, Popeye the Sailor Man would never appear. He did, however, manage to save my bacon a few times by making my mom laugh so hard she forgot to mete out the punishment. (whew)

These days I don't call on Popeye for backup. But, oh, there are times when I wish I could call on somebody to help me with the one household chore I truly dread: the dishes. I don't really mind doing laundry (thus the epithet), making the bed is no big deal, cleaning up around the computer -- um -- doesn't get done often enough, but these things are mere child's play compared to the dread I feel at the thought of doing dishes.

I really shouldn't complain, I know that. At least here I have a dishwasher. In days of yore, when we lived in apartments with tiny galley kitchens, or in WWII-era houses where the architect seemed to have said, "I can't shake the feeling I've forgotten something... oh yeah; well, we could just expand this closet," I was the dishwasher. All I have to do here is load and unload, and load and unload, and load and unload, and load and unload, ad infinitum. And there lies the trouble -- laundry and other chores come and go, but dishes are FOREVER. It's like working on a never-ending assembly line. Get one load finished, and there's another load waiting to be done; get behind on them, even a little bit, and they swallow you alive. HELP ME, SCULLERY FAIRIES!