Posted by JumpCrisscross 5 days ago
You have to special kind of person to obsess over dishwasher.
I've never had any problems with cleanliness with either the "normal" or "energy saver" modes on my dishwasher. (For that matter "energy saver" on mine trades more water for less energy - which given the cost for the energy/water is a good deal for me.)
1) gritty pulse material dried on, with potato starch
2) egg white, egg yolk, and cooked mixed egg, dried on
3) dried on avocado
4) finely chopped leaf herb, which floats in soapy water.
- find the spray arms and make sure they can hit the dirty surface
- ensure no bowl is concave up against gravity (water will collect)
- ensure everything is stable
- nothing that can block meshes should be on the dish when it goes in
None of this requires intelligence. It just requires looking at the machine and figuring it out. Once a little bit of plastic broke on one of the trays and it blocked the drain and it was trivial to figure out: see that water is stagnant, google the error code, attempt force drain, then reach for the drain filter and remove the clog. Ultimately, it's just a machine. The intake comes from the same water as the sink and the egress is above the garbage disposal.
Apart from that I just make sure all the things are active when it's ready to go: pod in the tray, rinse-aid in that section.
We have one of the quiet ones, which is nice, but also is a bit annoying since the only way to know if it is active is if it is displaying a red light on the floor. I'd prefer a front LED display. And I prefer just turning it off to run it.
My wife loads it haphazardly, and I load it a certain way but neither she nor I have any trouble with outcomes because while it may be complex functioning, the user awareness is restricted to those few levers.
The one annoyance is that we have these bowl dishes and they don't stand up like flat dishes. I'm sure there is an alternative tray holder that can do those but I haven't gotten around to replacing.
Maybe not quite efficient from a water/energy/soap perspective. But efficient for his time and attention.
It doesn’t matter, Mom. It’s fine as it is. But you know what? How about I never use a dishwasher again for my entire life? Deal? Deal!
My wife likes them, though. It looks to me that she is washing the dishes before “using the dishwasher,” so I don’t understand what she thinks she is gaining by it.
Dishwashers promote delusions.
If you only have a few dishes, then sure washing by hands is fast enough, but if you let it pile up on the sink for several days, it can be a fairly long process, on the order of 30-45 minutes if things are really stuck on there.
When I bought my house in 2018, it didn't have a dishwasher. We had to wash dishes by hand, and it changed our entire psychology. I was hesitant to cook anything in the kitchen because it would generate dishes and I don't like washing dishes, so we ended up mostly surviving on low-effort frozen food.
In 2021, we had the kitchen remodeled, and in the process we installed a dishwasher, and it made it fun to cook again. I could use a lot more dishes and utensils in the process, and the effort to clean up doesn't change significantly.
At this point I don't think I will live in a place that doesn't have a dishwasher ever again.
First reason is hand washing gives you a much faster iteration cycle on clean dishes. If I'm cooking I don't really want to wait 3 hours to get a pot back.
Second reason is (in my experience so far) dishwashers suck for any significant quantity/intensity of cooking. Ceramics, sure. But big pots? Don't fit in the dishwasher. And cooked-on food? It doesn't come off (despite people repeatedly claiming that if you "just use the dishwasher correctly" it will remove all food, I've never experienced that).
Third reason is a bunch of things that can't go in dishwashers, e.g. wood.
So in the end, the most time consuming things to wash need to be done by hand anyway. The rest is a small enough amount that it doesn't take very long to wash. And of course the dishwasher costs more to run. Once I factor all this in, hand washing isn't that terrible of an option.
I just don't use dishes or cutlery or utensils that aren't dishwasher safe. I don't use wood spoons, I have a set of silicone ones that I like.
I agree that there will be some stuff that sticks on sufficiently enough to where dishwashing probably won't get it off even if you do everything correctly, but I find that those are outliers. In those cases I let stuff soak in the sink for awhile, scrub it, and then put it in the dishwasher to make sure it's sanitized (my dishwasher has a sanitize cycle). I don't run the dishwasher just for that dish, I just wait for it to fill up again and then run it.
It will be hard for us to stay married, then. But I am willing to let you do all the dishes, for the sake of the children.
Apparently we had bent one of the hinges! How? By overloading the bottom rack too many times. His advice was to load it ~50% LESS than we were. And don't pull the bottom rack out all the way when it's fully-loaded.
I can't tell if this is like general dishwasher advice, or our GE is a POS.
It wasn't designed like a normal home dishwasher, it was open on all sides and you would slide a rack of dishes under the top part of it, pull a lever, and the dishwasher walls would come down around it and start the washing.
This kind of thing: https://www.buzzcateringsupplies.com/classeq-c500-gw-glasswa...
I've also used one three times as wide in a small food factory for cleaning equipment, mixing bowls and so on. This was even more powerful, and could clean greasy pots and bowls quickly. It was hot and steamy while unloading it.
Like this: https://www.buzzcateringsupplies.com/mach-utensil-washer-130...
There's probably something in between for restaurants
Presumably this: https://www.buzzcateringsupplies.com/classeq-pass-through-di...
And something like this for somewhere huge, maybe a large school or office: https://www.buzzcateringsupplies.com/warewashing/commercial-...
- They're 3-phase, 220-volt.
- They cannot use PVC or other plastics for drainage lines because the water is too hot.
- The high temperature steam can damage surroundings unless designed for it.
- They're very loud.
They'll wash in e.g. 90-seconds, but the dishes are too hot to handle for a bit. Plus some residential kitchenware cannot handle the high heat of a commercial dishwasher.
You'll likely never see a commercial dishwasher in a residential home.
But it was much worse at actually cleaning dishes than a regular home dishwasher. I never prerinse at home, but you really had to with this thing. Maybe it was just crap, but some searching around it seems like that's just how they're designed to operate.
Anyway they use a shit-ton of power and energy (wired for 5 KW, 2-3 kWh per cycle), they're loud, it's not something you'd want in your home kitchen.