You can use the water and soap you used to clean the plate for flushing out the first layer of crap out of the pan. Put the pan into the sink, then wash your plate. The water will end up in the pan. Your plate will most likely not be all that greasy compared to the pan.
Two of the main resources people have are time and money. The world offers many opportunities to trade one for the other, at widely varying rates.
I've often heard people recommend trading money for time in the abstract, but this advice is rarely accompanied by specific recommendations on how to do so.
How do you use money to buy time or otherwise make your life better/easier?
See also the flip-side of this post, "what are you surprised people pay for instead of doing themselves?"