If it were me, here's what it would mean:

Time spent doing dishes is time they're not spending doing other cleaning that might, in the scheme of things, be more difficult and unpleasant.

Like, I try to straighten up when someone's coming to clean, because it means they don't spend time on that (which is pretty easy for me) and they have more time to do a nice thorough job on the sweeping and vacuuming and scrubbing (which I can't stand.)

I have no idea what he meant, though.