How do I avoid losing my ring when I take it off to wash dishes?

Put a hook by the sink. If you want to stop losing your ring when you take it off to wash dishes, the hook is the whole answer. Not a ring dish, not the windowsill, not the edge of the counter. A hook.

I keep a small cast iron hook on the side of my own kitchen cabinet, just left of the sink. It has a slight upward curve so the band can't slide off. Cost about six dollars at a hardware store. The ring goes there every time. No exceptions. A wet ring on a wet ceramic or stone surface slides, and a ring sitting on a counter edge gets knocked into the sink by a pan, a sponge, or your own elbow. If the ring has a home one step from where you take it off, you won't put it down somewhere else.

Last March a client named Priya called me in a state. She'd taken her engagement ring off to scrub a sheet pan, set it on the back of the sink, and knocked it down the drain with the pan. She got lucky. The strainer basket caught it. But a prong bent, and I had to re-tip it. The repair cost more than a decent ring holder.

If your ring is a simple metal band with no stones, you can leave it on. Warm water, dish soap, and 14k or 18k gold get along fine. But if there are prongs, pavé, or an open gallery, take it off. Soap scum traps grit, and grit works under prongs and loosens stones over time. That's not the same as losing the ring, but it's the reason most people take rings off at the sink in the first place.

If you're washing dishes somewhere else, the same rule applies. The ring goes in a zippered pocket, on a ring holder necklace, or back on your finger. Never wrapped in a paper napkin next to the plate. I've seen three rings thrown away in restaurant napkins in the last two years. That's not an exaggeration.

If it does go down the drain anyway

Turn the water off immediately. Do not run the garbage disposal. Do not run more water to flush it through, because that pushes the ring further into the pipe. Pull out the sink strainer and the stopper, then shine a light down the drain. Most kitchen sinks have a P-trap directly beneath the basin, and that's usually where the ring lands unless it fell into the garbage disposal, in which case you keep the switch off and pull it from the rubber splash guard. If you'd rather not touch plumbing, call a plumber before you run the tap again.

The hook is cheaper than a re-tip.