Ancient thread, but replying because Google led me here. This basically happens because the Sims want to stack the dirty dish/glass you selected with another one, but they can't get to the other dish for some reason. Could be stuck in the microwave as others have mentioned - in my case, after a dinner party somehow (I have NO idea how), a couple of dirty plates got put on a display shelf high above my kitchen door. So I couldn't even see the dishes until I turned on wall view instead of cutaway... but once I dealt with those by manually dragging them onto a counter, everything was fine again.
In the meantime, if you can't find the "stuck" dish(es), you can manually drag the dirty dish/glass onto a sink and it will disappear.