Cooking a real meal for just yourself is a quiet way of saying you’re worth the dishes.

Effort spent on yourself with nobody else benefiting feels oddly hard to justify. Anything quick will do when you are the only one eating, and that reasoning quietly says your own evening is not worth the extra twenty minutes. Doing it properly is a small argument against that idea, made in a form that does not require any thinking.

Make one real meal for yourself this week, including the part where you sit down for it. Use the good plate if you have one. The washing up afterward is the point rather than the drawback.