Soak the pan
We are guilty of doing this and leaving dirty pans sitting in water for days on end. Pans do need to soak for some period of time in order to loosen up all the stuff that has gotten stuck to the surface. But a few hours at most would do the trick, not three days.
We hate to admit that we do this all the time and most of the people we live with are getting sick of it. We promise to stop letting pans soak for days at a time and just clean them a little bit faster. Keeping a kitchen clean is never easy, is it?