There are two types of dishwasher people

Posted by JumpCrisscross 4/14/2025

There are two types of dishwasher people(www.theatlantic.com)

115 points | 344 commentspage 2

ReptileMan 4/17/2025|

Okay - here is the deal. If it not water soluble or emulusifiable - it goes in the bin. No wood or knives, aluminium only the pieces you don't care. Order them so any piece has at least some waterflow and arms spin. Small stuff - top basket. Throw some detergent in the container and a dash outside for the pre rinse cycle. Here is the most important part - ignore the auto/eco and other planet saving or smart programs. Put it on big pots and pans heavily soiled - instead of 60C those programs operate on 75 to 80C degrees. If you can't fit everything in one go - the sink makes good temporary storage area.

You have to special kind of person to obsess over dishwasher.

Marsymars 4/17/2025|

> Here is the most important part - ignore the auto/eco and other planet saving or smart programs.

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.)

wesleyd 4/17/2025||

Hell is other people’s dishwasher organization strategies.

ggm 4/17/2025||

Dishwasher testing needs material analogues to:

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.

xnx 4/17/2025||

My favorite dishwasher hack: one bowl, one spoon, one fork. Use them for everything.

lnwlebjel 4/17/2025||

Seriously! Family of 5? Five bowls, five spoons ... Maybe have some extras in a hard to find place on the rare occasion of entertaining.

GuinansEyebrows 4/17/2025||

My desire to share a meal in my home is not fully dead but I admire the efficiency.

xnx 4/17/2025||

Ha! To clarify, one set per person. Each person only uses and is responsible for their own set.

Marsymars 4/17/2025||

When I was in university with three roommates we had one roommate who would leave all the dishes dirty in the kitchen, so when he left for Christmas break, the three of us made the executive decision to go down to one set of dishes per person.

renewiltord 4/17/2025||

In my family, this is my primary responsibility (it just so landed that way) and to be honest, it's not really that hard. I didn't even grow up with one and found it trivial to identify the things that the article says:

- 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.

mutagen 4/17/2025||

An elderly friend of mine who lives alone keeps his most used dishes in the dishwasher. Need a clean dish? Find one in there. Have a dirty dish? Put it in the dishwasher? Can't find a clean dish? Run the dishwasher.

Maybe not quite efficient from a water/energy/soap perspective. But efficient for his time and attention.

amelius 4/17/2025|

Convenience is the root of all evil.

satisfice 4/17/2025||

I refuse to use a dishwasher. I don’t think it makes anything faster or better. When I was a child in the seventies my household chore was loading the dishwasher, but my mom always said I did it wrong.

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.

tombert 4/17/2025|

Everyone always says that they can "wash dishes faster than the washer", and maybe that's true, but loading the dishwasher takes like five minutes of active effort, then you're done. It might take three hours to finish washing them but you're not involved.

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.

mcdeltat 4/18/2025|||

It's interesting how you talk about dishwashers stopping you cooking, because I found a bit of the opposite.

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.

tombert 4/18/2025||

To each their own, I found it made it really un-fun to cook anything that required more than two pots because I didn't want to do the dishes.

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.

satisfice 4/19/2025||||

You will not live in a place without a dishwasher, while I refuse to use them, ever.

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.

tombert 4/19/2025||

I am afraid I am already taken by a lady who also refuses to live in a place without a dishwasher :)

layer8 4/18/2025|||

The trick is to only own/use one set of dishes. This effectively prevents you from letting them pile up.

1024core 4/17/2025||

I have heard that there are "commercial" dishwashers which can clean a load of dishes in under 20 minutes. Is that true? Has anyone tried one of them?

parliament32 4/17/2025||

More like 90-120s. There's the type that close from the top (expensive) and the conveyor type (more expensive), but they're incredibly fast, mostly because they blast near-boiling water at pressure-washer velocities. They also don't typically have a "drying" cycle -- because the dishes are so superheated they dry themselves in another half minute. Downside is no plastics or anything else meltable. See https://www.cafemutfak.com/en/blog/content/industrial-dishwa...

mcdeltat 4/18/2025||

Having worked in a commercial kitchen, I can say these dishwashers are not really made for the same purpose as home dishwashers. The commerical ones with the 2 minute cycle kinda suck at cleaning, probably because of the shorter cycle and minimal design. They don't remove stuck-on food. They only remove what can be removed by spraying water for a short while. What they will do well is sanitise your dishes, because the water is fucking hot. It was an art form in the kitchen to find the most efficient balance between prescrubbing/presoaking the dishes and getting them through the dishwasher.

pesus 4/17/2025|||

I worked at a Pizza Hut in college that had one that washed a full load of dishes in just a few minutes. I'm blanking on the exact time, but I'm almost certain it was under 10 minutes. It got extremely hot, so it probably wouldn't work for a lot of dishes people have at home, but it was very efficient! We saved at least a few hours of labor a day from it, and an unquantifiable amount of sanity.

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.

Symbiote 4/17/2025|||

I've used the type that are common in bars/pubs/nightclubs in the UK and Denmark. They take 20 minutes or so to heat the water, then each cycle is just 2 minutes or so. The glasses are loaded on trays, so it's best to have a place to load up a tray and another for them to cool down.

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-...

buildbot 4/17/2025|||

Yep, I’ve only volunteered in commercial kitchens for events and stuff before, and the ones I’ve been in have essentially an assembly line for dishes from sinks to a dishwasher box that took 2-3 plastic cubes of dishes, and washed them in like, 5 minutes. No drying though.

Someone1234 4/17/2025|||

Sure, but you'd need to be quite dedicated to install one in a home:

- 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.

morsch 4/17/2025|||

I used a commercial dishwasher in an Airbnb that had the fittings for a catering operation. It had an initial heat up time of like twenty minutes, after that each cycle of dishes took like... two minutes? Maybe five.

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.

adammarples 4/17/2025||

Yes they're in every restaurant

spelunker 4/17/2025||

We recently had someone at our house to repair our dishwasher, because we suddenly started hearing a horrible grinding sound when closing the door.

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.

bruckie 4/17/2025|

I think probably the latter. Either that, or your dishes are made out of tungsten or something. (If so, I'd love to see your dish collection. That would be rad.)

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