Dishwasher Magnet

A few days ago I came home to find the hubby making dinner.* I also came home to find him using dirty dishes that I had loaded into the dishwasher the night before. You see, I have the habit of scrubbing our dishes before I put them into the dishwasher - it's a hard one to break after living in college apartments with crappy appliances - and the hubby often has trouble telling if they're clean or dirty. So, to remedy the situation I made a Clean/Dirty magnet for our kitchen.

*No, this was not just a pleasant surprise. He's the chef of the family and I'm in charge of kitchen clean up.

First I drew up the words in AutoCAD. I printed out several copies so I could test different coloring methods.



I went with red and green because A) it matches my kitchen and B) red and green mean stop and go. I attempted several different coloring methods, but I decided they all looked too sloppy.

To sharpen up the look, I went back and added color in AutoCAD. I was going to choose the one I liked best, but I ended up keeping them all. I figured the first might end up getting wet and ruined so it couldn't hurt to have back-ups.

I cut them all out and laminated them with clear packing tape. I purposely sized the cards so that they would fit on one strip of tape without a seam.

Then I just added some basic magnetic tape to the back to stick it onto the dishwasher.

So, that's the simple craft I came up with to keep my hubby from using dirty dishes.