The Dishwasher: A Simple Concept
One the better inventions of the last century for kitchens everywhere was the dishwasher. The promise of never washing another dish, of easily cleaning up after dinner, of spending more time with the family……..what a crock. I have yet to see a dishwasher clean a dish without human intervention. It’s pathetic.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe my wife is in tune with this reality. Her confidence in our dishwasher is staggering. I have witnessed the depth of her confidence as she loads the dishwasher. I can see she believes she has a dishwasher that actually WASHES dishes. Spaghetti still on the plate? No problem. Oatmeal still in the bowl? Easy. Cake on a platter? Piece of cake. (sorry)
Of course, the reality is that the dishes are not clean. If there is a speck of dirt on them going in, it’s still there when you take them out. I’m not sure what is happening in there, other than jacking my water bill, but it certainly isn’t WASHING anything.
Yes, I’ve seen that advertisement from Maytag where the guys loads a full cake into the dishwasher and it disappears. What a total joke. What a great way to destroy your plumbing. I don’t care if it has chopping blades or not, can it scrape that grain of pulverized oatmeal off a bowl???
I’ve had friends tell me to try different detergent. So I did. This appears to be a whole other racket. Seriously, how many different detergents do you need? And how do you choose when NONE of them get anything any cleaner? Reminds me; I need to buy stock in these companies.
So, of course, I have been relegated to hand-washing each dish before placing it in the dishwasher. Now, mind you, this is only to rinse debris off the dishes, not an actual soapy cleaning. Why should the dishwasher get off that easy? No, our dishwasher is a sanitizer now. At least now I won’t know if it isn’t doing its job.
Which leads me to the next problem…..loading the thing. Not to brag, but I have the ability to organize the loading of a dishwasher pretty well. It is an art, because not only do you need to fit everything in, you need to do it so that the water reaches all the dishes. However, my wife does not appear to be concerned with this. Actually I would guess she loads the dishwasher using a horseshoe toss technique. From across the kitchen.
I open the dishwater to find bowls on top of bowls on top of more bowls. Cups turned over and full of water. The silverware is wedged in the tray so tightly I need a crowbar to extract them. A huge pot is turned upside down blocking all water from reaching the top rack, like a blast shield. The pot is huge. Real big. It should have its own zip code.
“Hey, ” I mention to her, “why didn’t you just hand wash the pot? It’s too big for the dishwasher.”
“Ah, it can handle it. Besides did you see how big that thing is? I’m not washing that in the sink. It won’t fit,” she responds. “By the way, can you load the dishwasher tonight?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Great. Make sure you throw in the toy box. I need it sanitized.”
I think I have to ban her from touching it.
So it follows not long after that I smell burning in the middle of the night. I rush downstairs to find the dishwasher near the end of its drying cycle. And something is smoking. That something is a plastic spoon that slid down to the heating element and melted into something that resembled the devil’s pitchfork.
But worse than this, there is a green film all over the inside of the dishwasher which does not want to come off. I scrape. I scrub. Not coming off. It is not until I look into the bottom on the machine and see a little green paper stuck in the silverware tray. It is the wrapping of a crayon. A green crayon.
“Oh yeah,” my wife says,” The one-year-old must have stuck that in there when she was playing with the dishwasher tray earlier.” She finds this hilarious.
“Of course,” I say. “Silly me, I didn’t know this was one of her toys.”
“Oh pipe down, slim,” she says. “She likes the dishwasher. Who cares if she plays with the tray?”
Apparently I am the only one with a hangup on a properly operating dishwasher. As for the green mess, well I am wondering if I can find a way to get the one-year-old to clean it up since she loves the dishwasher so much. Any ideas?
Funny post. Our dishwasher does pretty good most of the time. Of course pre rinsing is just part of the deal. My biggest problem with our dishwasher was when the drain got clogged up. I had to nearly take the whole thing apart to solve the problem. Fun times.
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I have a similar problem at home, minus the green crayon. Nobody else here has any grasp of fluid dynamics, which is why I find cups stacked together on the top rack, and plates doubled up in the slots below.
My favorite is the dangling pot handle that stops the spray rotator, so that only a few dishes get the life blasted out of them, and everything else gets only slightly moist. Love that. My family thinks I’m weird to always be listening to the dishwasher while it runs to be sure it’s doing what it should be doing.
Have had to fix the dishwasher three times, to remove things like screws, broken glass, pumpkin seeds, etc. Fun.
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I guess this trait is inherited. My better half complains that she has to constantly re-arrange the dishes when she wants to put more in. My response is that if I have a 10-piece puzzle, I make 10 pieces fit — I’m not concerned about 11, 12, and certainly not 20. If you want me to arrange 20 pieces, give me 20!