To think dishwashers are a waste of money and don;t save you that much time/work?

[MinkSlink]

We've just moved into a new house with a dishwasher which I used for the first time today.

The cycle took about an hour and the dishes were no cleaner than if I had washed them myself. It took a while to load/unload, meant we had dirty dishes hanging around in it until it was full, and some of the cups had silt in them after the wash, also ou can't wash pots and pans in there.

It takes me on average about 5 minutes to do the dishes by hand,

AIBU to think dishwashers are an expensive waste of time?

TheProvincialLady, good tip. DH in a blind panic, put washing up liquid into the tablet bit.

It sort of worked.

Do you wash your clothes in the sink or let a machine do it for you?
Do you clean your floor by hand or use a mop?
Do you go round on your hands and knees picking fluff out of the carpet or use a machine?
An absolute no brainer and anyone who says its quicker to wash up by hand is talking absolute bollocks. FACT

Yabu I rank my dishwasher just below my kids and my cats. It does get things cleaner and does it more economically. Maybe yours is old or needs a clean/salt?

Oh LOADS of things. A really soapy soap dish. Those step things from IKEA that little children stand on to reac the sink (we have one in the kitchen and it always gets covered in food when DS2 helps). The washing up bowl. Tarnished silver items (nothing valuable). Toothbrushes. Bath toys. Playdoh encrusted playdoh tools. Rare books. Ok maybe there is a limit. But you get the idea.

I never thought of washing the IKEA step thingy in there! Thank you

We rented a house after emigrating without a dishwasher - never, ever again. Family of 4? Throw in regular house-guests.... Result - a never-ending stream of dishes to be hand-washed. Never fucking ending...!

The bench always looks untidy with dishes stacked for washing, or washed and air-drying. At least you can tidy them away into a dishwasher and clear the space.

Plus, no matter how quick you might be able to do them, when the dishwasher does them, it does them (not you) freeing you up to do other stuff.

Will never be without a dishwasher ever again!

I always say the same thing on these threads, which is that I rank by dishwasher above my washing machine: I can pay a laundrette to service wash my laundry if I need to; no one will service wash my dishes.

Your dishwasher sounds knackered. Mine is a workhorse and I love it.

oooh yes, to soapy soap dishes. We have a very poncey one in an upstairs bathroom with a little wooden rack inside it. Perfect for dishwasher.

I also put sunglasses and combs in ours.

On the subject of dishwashers i'm wanting to order one that's 60cm, the space I have is 64 cm......am I risking it a wee bit or should I just go forth and hand up my rubber gloves ??

Baumatic are shit. I replaced ours with an entry level smeg and everything is clean, every time.

Make sure you use dishwasher salts and a rinse aid if your tabs don't contain it.

Do a service wash once a month.

Wait until you've been using it a while. You'll suddenly find a slight feeling of panic a the thought of being without it [hgrin]. We put everything in ours. If it doesn't survive we didn't want it anyway [hwink]. Make sure the salt and rinse aid is topped up and run it with a dishwasher cleaner, use good quality detergent, you should find everything coming out sparkly clean.

YABVVVVVVU

Until I got one, I didn't see the point. Now I would hate hate hate to live without a dishwasher.

So much easier to stack, wait and unload rather than having your hands in several changes of greesey water, several rounds of drying up, things cluttering up the draining board looking untidy.

Oh, and most modern kitchen pans and dishwasher safe so fine to go thru.

Only thing I don't dishwasher is my nice wood chopsticks, nice wood salad servers and my nice knives.

YANBU
We don't have a dishwasher and I don't want one! I don't mind washing up by hand and by being very careful when we wash we actually use very little water. Looking at the estimates of dishwasher water consumption I would say that we use less water than the dishwasher to do all the dishes, pots and pans, and that includes the water to wipe down the tables and work surfaces afterwards.

It doesn't take me long and I usually leave it to dry on the rack; if there's plenty to wash and dry, then dh and I do it together, which is more sociable than stacking the dishwasher.
In fact I can't think of ever being converted to dishwashers, because I hate stacking dishwashers, and even more than stacking I hate coming back to my kitchen to start preparing the next meal and find that there is still a machine load of dishes to put away which may or may not be actually clean, and may or may not be completely dry.

I think most dishwashers are 60cm the full sized ones anyway. The gap mine is in is exactly that as the builders left the space for a built in (option on the house had you got there in time). So long as you have a hole to thread the waste pipe and water inlet 64cm gap should be more than enough

Oh and should add.... mine is 20 years old and now would be considered very basic as has pre-wash, normal and super wash. But washes like a dream so long as I remember to put the tablet in and no need to rinse

I hate them. Have worked in houses with all brands and sometimes things are clean but there is usually something that isn't clean or dry.

Stacking is great fun but brings out my OCD side. Emptying is soul destroying. i hate it with a passion. It is worse than putting away the ironing. But you have to do it every day. For this and this alone YANBU.

You put your dishes in a smelly cupboard for days then faff about for ages putting stuff in and out in the right place ...

"I only book holiday cottages that have a dishwasher"

YABU - without the dishwasher I would no longer have a relationship oh yeah, baumatics are crap - we got one with our kitchen and changed it for a Siemens which has done us well. We only have a 45cm one, unloading it is quite therapeutic - I usually do it while the tea is brewing. Seriously, I can't imagine life without it now that we have 2 small children and cook 3 meals a day at home

Five in one dishwasher tablets are worth every penny extra.

YABU. completely.

the key thing is being able to hide stuff in it.

it sounds like yours definitely needs rinse aid. not sure about salt as i live in a soft water area and don't tend to need it.

And everyone puts in their glasses and cups that they have used once. I use mine all day (obviously for my use only) and maybe rinse cups out inbetween. No point with a dishwasher as you have to fill the bastard.

So I'm emptying (see above) a rack of 20 cups when there would have been 4 if you handwash.

YABU

I wouldn't be without a dishwasher! I particularly love how glasses come out all sparkly. I don't need salt or anything like that in mine as I'm in Scotland and our water is soft - just like we don't need limescale removers.

I had a problem with my dishwasher a couple of months ago and we had to handwash dishes for three days. It was quite funny because my 24 year old son mended the door on his first day off work! Anything else I ask him to fix takes decidedly longer.

It's wonderful.

Our kitchen is so small, we'd run out if room to cook if we had the washing up standing around waiting to be done. Everything can be put neatly in it and its ready to go without the work tops being taken over. Even the DTs like helping to empty it.