The guy who wrote this must have forgotten what it's like to be single...

As a "convicted bachelor," I can tell you that I don't just use one dish at the top of the stack. I go through the stack over the course of a week, and put a week's worth (or more) of dishes in the wash bin or dishwasher (depending on current apartment amenities) all at once. In other words, I treat the existence of a stack of dishes in the cupboard as an excuse to put off doing dishes in the first place...

Or to put it back on HN terms, I don't perform garbage collection until memory's full...