Cleaning Dishes in Wrong Area (side note on upgrading)

[justproud2b]

So I remember seeing someone post about this but for some reason to save my life I can't find this post anywhere now that I have an answer! I figured I would just share with you things I came up with while testing. As you can see from the screenshots my house is setup from when leaving the living room you must past the bathroom in order to get to the kitchen. I have never had an issues with the setup below having my Sim clean their dishes in the bathroom.

So what I decided to do was play with the hygiene rating and make the one in the bathroom higher than the kitchen thinking it would trigger the place that will make them the cleanest unfortunately he still walked through or past the bathroom to go clean in the kitchen. Then it dawned on me. I used a counter in my bathroom and a sink on that. Then like clockwork he went right to the bathroom to clean his dishes. I tried a lower rated counter but it didn't matter. He continued to hit the bathroom. So I removed the counter and went back to my original setup and he went right back to the kitchen to clean his dishes.

This means if your sims are using the bathroom to clean their dishes that either your sinks busted in your kitchen or you have a cabinet in your bathroom which seems to trigger it being a kitchen cleaning station. Hopes this helps!

*Side Note* While doing the experimenting I was nervous that my upgrades I had applied on my objects would go away when I moved them to the family inventory and I am happy to report that they keep their upgrades when moved to the family inventory and back out!

[_Annika_]

Thank you, this is very useful information!

[Playalot]

Ohhh, so that's why my sims keep using the bathroom sink! Great, it's easily fixed. 

[Franki]

I guess I'll throw the curveball... my sims still wash their dishes in the bathroom instead of the kitchen and there are no cabinets in the bathroom.. at first I was annoyed and like you toyed with the upgrading to see what the difference might be but now, my sims only clean the dishes in the bathroom.. kitchen sink doesn't seem to get used, the bathroom is at one end of the house and the kitchen the other end with the living/dining room in the middle. I can only guess my game has decided to give me that little quirk.

[justproud2b]

I guess I'll throw the curveball... my sims still wash their dishes in the bathroom instead of the kitchen and there are no cabinets in the bathroom.. at first I was annoyed and like you toyed with the upgrading to see what the difference might be but now, my sims only clean the dishes in the bathroom.. kitchen sink doesn't seem to get used, the bathroom is at one end of the house and the kitchen the other end with the living/dining room in the middle. I can only guess my game has decided to give me that little quirk.

Only thing I could think of is the distance of it all. I usually try to have my bathrooms in the middle of my house.

[Saltypaws]

I don't have a counter in my bathroom either and the bathroom is upstairs and they still go up there to wash the dishes.  I did however, put a bathroom sink in the kitchen with counters on each side and then they tend to use it more, but sometimes still go upstairs.  Mine are all mostly upgraded too, so not sure why they choose the bathroom.  I did try and take out the sinks in the bathroom all together, but that didn't work too well.

[Kaesa]

My sims tend to wash dishes in the bathrooms because, as justproud2b says, I make the bathrooms as easy-access as possible.  (Three sim pregnancies in rapid succession taught me that bathrooms CANNOT be too close or too numerous.)

I also find that often one of the kids is eating in the bedroom talking to the other two while they work on their skills or do homework, so when one of the sims goes around collecting dirty dishes to clean up, especially if they start downstairs, they collect ALL the dishes and usually end up upstairs in the kids' room.  So I think for me this is an indirect result of multitasking.

[justproud2b]

My bedrooms are litterally that... bed rooms. I prefer my sims to all be together and interacting especially in Sims 4 with multitasking now (yay) so I tend to make common areas with multiple things in them. So my sims are rarely hanging out anywhere other than outside or the downstairs.