As a follow up to a recent post about toaster ovens and toasters, I’ve come across another troublesome kitchen appliance, the dishwasher.
I love the dishwasher. Well, I love the idea of it; not when it comes to resource consumption (water, detergent, materials to build), but from a pure convenience standpoint. Here’s the problem, it is a total waste. We were without one for several weeks in the place we’re renting. We had to wash everything by hand. It made it feel as though we were spending a majority of our free time washing dishes. The reality? Most of the stuff we washed by hand couldn’t go in the dishwasher anyway.
Here’s the backstory: The dishwasher had a significant amount of water sitting in it when we moved in to the place. It turns out that the previous tenant didn’t “pre-rinse” the dishes. This sounds absurd, but before putting dishes in the appliance, they needed to be rinsed off first. I don’t know how much crud was on the dishes when he put them in the dishwasher, but enough to gum up the drain. So, not only did the dishwasher, which was fairly new, burn out, it still required dishes to be washed (okay, rinsed) before placing them in the tub for “washing.”
The other piece here is that we now fill up the dishwasher with plates, bowls, cups, and silverware. That’s about it. There are no pots or pans that can go in. No nice knives. No baby bottles, as they don’t really get clean anyway. No plastic plates. No tupperware style containers. No stainless steel containers. It can’t really wash anything other than the standard place setting at meals. All of the other pieces must be washed by hand.
My in-laws have never owned a dishwasher. They wash everything by hand. They fill one half of the sink with hot soapy water (probably 2 gallons, max) and about a half gallon in the other half. That’s less than half the total water used by a dishwasher, plus no energy needed for drying (the drying rack doesn’t need to be plugged in, heated, or cooled down). An occasional dish towel is required to dry the pots, plates, and pans.
We’ve talked a fair bit about tiny homes lately. There isn’t room for more than a couple of plates, bowls, cups, a pot, and a pan anyway. When you use all of your kitchen supplies every day, a dishwasher just becomes something that takes up more space and convinces you to buy more plates, bowls, silverware, etc.
As for the old dishwasher? That’s it in the picture. It’s sitting on the porch, awaiting a day when it’s . . . I don’t know what the landlord has in mind for it. Probably the dump. Not a shame, a waste.
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