Melbourne mum tries viral TikTok ‘spaghetti dump’ hack to avoid doing dishes

A Melbourne mum has taken a daring approach to dinnertime with her two young kids, employing a divisive viral TikTok hack.

A Melbourne mum has shared a bold “no-dishes” TikTok dinner hack for bustling households, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Influencer Adele Barbaro shared her take on the viral “spaghetti dump” trend, which involves dishing pasta up directly onto a disposable tablecloth without serving platters or plates.

The Instagram video, in which Adele casually tips a steaming pot of cooked spaghetti and meatballs in the middle of the table, sees her children elicit shrieks of delight.

However, it was not for the reason she’d intended, with son Harvey convinced she was encouraging a “pasta fight”.

The children were confused at first by their mum’s serving technique.

… Until temptation to hurl pasta across the kitchen struck.

“We’re going to throw it at each other!,” he exclaimed with glee, adding that he’d seen “pasta fights” on Instagram.

“NO, do no have a pasta fight,” Adele is heard telling her giggling children, while instructing them to “dig in and have fun” as she handed them each a fork.

“So I wanted to do that viral, TikTok ‘spaghetti table dump’ trend but the kids thought I was doing some other food fight trend I’m not aware of,” she later posted to followers.

“Really took the shine off my carefree, cool mum approach when I had to spend the entire dinner begging them not to chuck it at each other,” she joked.

Followers praised Adele for the “fun mum” dinnertime activity, while some admitted they were not “brave” enough to try it themselves.

The trend has been doing the rounds on TikTok since last year as an exciting twist on dinnertime and to minimise clean-up for parents.

@mikandnick The only way to eat spaghetti #dumpdinner#family#familytok#parentsoftiktok#FYP♬ Yummy - Justin Bieber

@burdens2share Such a fun and easy dinner! The kids ended up loving it! #raos#greenpan#dumpdinner#spaghetti#spaghettidinner♬ original sound - D. Burd

@emily.austiin FIRST dump dinner. If you havent done this do it! Easy clean up and fun for your kids. #momsoftiktok#kids#toddlersoftiktok#christmas#christmas2022#food#foodtiktok#justmomthings♬ original sound - Emily

While most have seen it as a simple way to have a laugh with the kids, not all reactions have been positive, with some people pointing out the trend is a drastic shift from table manners of the past, concerned children will want to “dump there food on the table because it’s more fun” at every meal.

Others said eating directly from the table is “super common” among large families in the Philippines and Africa, while one social media user said “spaghetti on a board”, using bread instead of cutlery, had its moment in the ‘80s.

Adele Barbaro’s attempt at the viral “messy dinner” trend comes after the popular parenting blogger conducted an at-home “experiment” stemming from a frustration with which many parents would be familiar.

“In protest, a few weeks back, I quietly stopped collecting toilet rolls and putting them in the bin,” she wrote on Instagram. “It has been a bit of a social experiment to see if anyone else in my family would do it,” she added.

Unfortunately, her plan did not have a successful outcome.

“They haven’t. I expect this room to eventually just completely fill with toilet rolls and my family to continue to ignore them and just change toilets and use the other toilet downstairs,” she joked along with a photo of the empty rolls littering the floor.