Hiding your knifes between ypur dishes is your own damn fault.

Move everything to the bathtub

One of the utilities of the sink is that it's where dirty stuff goes when you're in the middle of cooking so it's out of the way of food.

I don't want to leave stuff that's been used to prepare something where it could cross contaminate something else. That's what the sink is for

If you're letting your sink get full enough that it becomes a friction to being able to actually clean stuff, you're not doing the washing up frequently enough and should adjust the frequency. And if you put knives in safely, getting stabbed is not a problem; I've never managed it anyway

Counterpoint: decreasing the utility of the sink is a decent way of incentivizing a rapid cleanup. Its main function is cleaning anyway and you're likely to not need it for food items soon if you just filled it with the dishes from your most recent meal.
If you don't own a dishwasher, the sink is likely also the best place to temporarily store dirty dishes. If you have two sinks and not a ton of dishes, you can even use one sink for washing and the other for storage.

I grant you the danger of hidden blades though. One thing that can help is washing knives separately so you know when to expect them.

When I wash dishes if there's a lot, I rinse them and take them out, organize em by type on the counter. Then I get my sponge and grave one by one and scrub them and place them in the sink. When the sink vets crowded I rinse those off.

If its a medium pile I scrub them and put them on the counter until I feel I've done enough and the rinse them off