To think dishwasher fans are part of a cult

[Peachpicklepie]

I look at people who like dishwashers the same way as I might someone who lives isolated from society, wearing a tin foil hat, while hanging on the every word of madman - with a mix of confusion and pity. Why do people like them? You still have to scrape the waste food off, rinse the plate, then put it in the rack. With hand washing this is where it ends. With a dishwasher you then have to put up with the horrible wafts of smell that come out every time you add a utensil until you finally have a full load/have run out of everything when you can turn it on. Then you have to unload the bastard. Don't get me started on the slops of cold or hot water you get from upside down mugs. So what is the appeal?!

Didn't have a dishwasher until we changed the kitchen, having lived with a 70s style one for 15 years! Nothing fancy, but have never scrapped (other than lumps of food!), or rinsed, start it up when full, use Lidl own dishwasher tablets, run an occasional cleaning programme and would now not be without one. Not a cult, but I have far better things to do than stand at a sink!

I add banana and courgette to that list. Banana bakes on solid and raw courgette leaves slug trails that the dishwasher sets. I normally have water already in a bowl from other things eg rinsing veg, washing hands that I use for that.

If I have a lot of stuff that needs rinsing eg if I've been baking, I just run an extra pre-rinse cycle.

Happy to be a cult member. I don’t scrape the plates or rinse them mind 🫣

I didn't used to see the point in dishwashers - when we moved into our current place a couple of years ago, the kitchen was in need of replacing and I planned to ditch the dishwasher and replace it with more cupboard space. Having used it for a few months, I was converted, and it's still here in the new kitchen. 😄It's just a slimline, which is good for 2 of us; we'd probably have to own more crockery than we need , or run it half empty, if we had a full size one.

I don't rinse anything, and we don't really leave enough food on our plates to clog up the filter!

Could I live without it - of course, and did for ~40 years. Is it nice to have - yes!

It's so much quicker and tidier! After use we scrape the plates and put in the dishwasher. When it's full we turn it on (usually before bed) and empty when it's done (usually in the morning or when I get home after work)

It took me about 5 minutes tops to unload it tonight although it wasn't very full and I did it whilst waiting for toast. To load it takes seconds at a time. It would definitely take me longer to wash everything up by hand and I would struggle to wash up whilst making toast because I would have soggy hands.

Wouldn't work with ours. It's a Bosch "Quiet" and is pretty much silent. It doesn't even beep at the end when it's done!

Not intentionally bought - just was the right price and the right colour and had a cutlery tray rather than basket.

The first time we used it we were saying "is it doing anything?" and "the lights are all off, does that mean it's finished? It didn't make a noise!" 😂

I agree, OP.

There was a tumble-dryer thread recently too, and it made me realise what an austerity fan/wartime cheapskate/puritan I am! I've found in recent years that my lack of interest in these devices puts me very much in tune with the times in environmental terms.
I wasn't brought up with either of these things and just don't find them fit-for-purpose most of the time. We use our dishwasher after hosting a meal and at Christmas - but otherwise, with just me and my husband, it's quicker and more economical to just ruddy well wash up - takes less than 5 mins.

If you've got a full load, well-stacked, then fine - but I've heard of people sticking a couple of saucepans in and running the d/w. Naughty!! Also - it's not great for precious things. A lot of my stuff I wouldn't want to trust to the demonic machine.

As for those saying they don't scrape lumps of food off first - yuk! I hope they don't pour fat down the sink or put rubbish down the loo as well....

Really?

I just stick my stuff in after scraping off the worst and every two days set it running overnight. There's literally no thought involved other than the occasional "must pick up some dishwasher tablets" or "need to give the filter a rinse".

He liked having two dishwashers
The novelty of living out of one dishwasher then washing and transferring to the other.
He’s not bothered tbh and actually prefers to just wash by hand, saving on the electricity.

I was pretty old before engaging in dishwashery.

Couldn't see the point as only generated small amount of pots anyway.

I inherited one in a house I bought. It was shockingly bad at cleaning so never really bothered.

Then replaced it with a Bosch and all of a sudden the God of Dishwashers had smiled on me. Couple it with Quantum Finish tablets and it works brilliantly. No more half cleaned plates and now the dishwasher gets used regularly.

Still don't do decent glasses in it though.

I have never rinsed a plate before putting it into the dishwasher. I am equally happy to wash by hand as lived without the dishwasher for most of my life. I am even happier if someone else does it for me. At one point I was telling people I had a dishwasher, it was my boyfriend.

What you need is the upgraded system - Dog+ Dishwasher.

Dog deals with left overs, any pre-rinsing needed for baked on stuff, then dishwasher deals with final clean, de-germing things the dog licked.

No fuss, and if you sort out the right detergent/additives for hard water you don't get fogged up glasses or streaky stuff.

Same. The point is that I don't want to wash plates. Plus, everything is out of sight. What's not to like?

We get through so much I would have things piled up everywhere (and get nothing else done!) if I didn’t have one. A decent one cleans so much better than by hand.

This!

I scrape off any food scraps (which you would do before hand-washing anyway) but don't rinse gravy/ sauce off.

Having seen what dogs eat and where they put their tongues I would not eat off plates they had licked, even if they went in a dishwasher hotter than the surface of the sun.

This is akin to saying inside loos are a cult. You have to keep flushing them and cleaning them to ensure the house doesn't smell.

I'm old enough to remember my grandparents having a loo at the far end of the garden. It was a small hut containing a bench with a hole cut in it. Under the hole was a steep channel cut into the adjacent cliff edge. All the waste ran down the channel and was washed into the sea far below by the rain. They used newspaper to wipe their bums which was also washed away. The only maintenance was my grandad throwing a bucket of rain water down the channel if we had an dry spell. So much 'easier' than an inside loo! So much so that when (in the 1990s) the council installed an inside bathroom with shower and flushing toilet the family still preferred to use the hut and the new bathroom was saved for visitors.

Having experienced both I will not be giving up my ensuite anytime soon.

My mum used to be a bit like that with rinsing. She soon learned!

What a load of nonsense OP. Before we got our dishwasher I used to spend about 1h every day washing dishes for a family of 4, and some stuff was really hard to get off. We soak really caked on food in the sink, but you don't actually need to.

My experience is that you can smell the musty aroma of a dishwasher washed glass! And it's cloudy! But maybe there is hope yet!

One thing I would say is that if we put anything which has been used to cook eggs in eg pan for scrambling/omelettes, then that smell does tend to taint other things washed with it - so better washing eggy things by hand .

@Peachpicklepie I felt exactly like you but was persuaded to get one when we bought our new build home in 2004. My DH and my Mother both thought I should get one and I gave in. Now I wouldn't be without it.

Yes, left over food needs to be scraped off and put in the food recycling bin, but after that it is bunged into the dishwasher and we put it on once a day usually. It absolutely cleans pans and the like. I tend not to put in non-stick ones either, though as they rinse very easily by hand ( they are good ones). I don't put in crystal glasses or other expensive ones as they MAY finish up cloudy. Other than that, everything else goes in. There is a knack to loading the dishwasher - certain things should only go in the top rack, but the instructions will tell you which items not to put in the bottom rack and you'll learn that very quickly

You are supposed to leave the door closed when the dishwasher is finished so that the residual heat dries all the dishes ( we leave ours overnight usually) and ours does a pretty good job of doing that. Get the odd drop or three of water sometimes, but most things simply need taken out of the dishwasher and put away. What's not to love!!

Fusty wash bowl full of cloudy dirty dish water, mmm, nice!

my MiL would wash up in tepid water, pans first glasses last in what looked like brown Windsor soup, turned my stomach, then emptied the bowl, gave it a quick swill then plunge a lettuce in to ‘wash it’ - she didn’t approve of anything new fangled, still had an old top loader washer in the outhouse with a mangle - that was up to her.
This was also 40 + years ago with the mindset persisting, I find perplexing.

my mum was a little sniffy about us having a dishwasher, would keep darting into the kitchen to wash her cup and saucer, running 5 gallons of hot water to do so.
She did come around, once she realised after a family lunch, loaded up, go for a walk, leave the ‘machine’ to do the work that is what its for.
So dad took the under sink cupboard out and fitted one in for her, as he would have quite happily carried on emptying a tank full of hot water washing tneir ‘tea things’
She never ever let on, just said, “leave the dishes, I’ll do them later” ha ha martyrdom intact.

Rinsing not required. It definitely saves time, that's the point of them. If you don't want one fine but I don't understand why you wouldn't want to save time unless you really really really love doing the washing up.

This has brought back (unhappy!) memories of loo in the back garden of my grandfathers house. Looking back, it was a bit shocking. It was dark, and freezing, and very scary as a small child.