Come and talk to me about your dishwashers please! Before I spend any money on one!

[Flibbertyjibbet]

So, we will be moving soon to a house with small kitchen and DP says he will install kitchen with a dishwasher, yay!
But as the kitchen is small he says a slimline dishwasher it will have to be.
Just been to see a friend's new house, she has an inbuilt dishwasher and asked me if I want to buy her 1 year old dishwasher from her old house (and mentioned a v good price).
I said dp says we will need a slimline one, she said 'oh I'm not just trying to sell you mine but to be honest I don't think slimline ones are enough for a family of 4'. Had a look at hers and tbh I can't imagine something smaller doing for us all.
So, ignoring the fact that I have been offered a cheap 1 year old dishwasher, can I have your comments please on slimline or normal width dishwashers please.
We are family of 4, 2 small boys, do baking, cooking from scratch etc.
Are the slimline ones only intended for singlies/couples with no kids?
Oh and we are not on a water meter

nfk - No I don't do all the housework!! We both work full time and he is washing up right now as I mumsnet

He has lived in 'my' house for the past 9 years with everything organised how I like it. Can we blame him for wanting a little bit of say in how our next house is laid out

Ah, well then someone should tell him too that a slimline won't be big enough for a family of four. Or rather it will be fine so long as you don't mind washing up quite a bit by hand. As you say, it's a trade off.

No way would slimline be enough, not if you're cooking and baking a lot.

We are a family of 5 and had to run our full-size one every day, and even then we either had to do lots by hand or leave dirty stuff around to re-load later.

Now we don't bother with a dishwasher at all, and actually we find it much better and not much more time-consuming.

You're right though, separate dining room and larger bedroom is much better than a bigger kitchen!

I used to cook LOADS, but hardly had to do any washing up by hand - and that was a family of four.

I have the solution! Agree to the slimline machine but make a deal with your DH that he has to wash up (and put away) all the saucepans that won't fit in it. Marina, can't believe none of your circle put pots and pans in the machine. Life's too short surely. I wouldn't buy anything anything that can't be machine-washed except maybe the odd exceptional item. Same for clothing - I try to avoid handwash/dryclean only stuff.

i have dh and one dd. we have the bosch slimline which is fine. we can whack it on at economy setting after a baking/cooking spree.

agree with husband!