Our last dishwasher never really died as much as it got retired.
It started its life out with enthusiasm!
Like most appliances do.
It washed bottles with caked on baby formula, and cookie cutters encrusted with play-doh.
Never complaining, just doing its job.
As time went on, it was less and less of a high performance machine.
Pretty soon, the dishes did not get clean.
The dishwasher was tired, I suppose.
The dishwasher would pulverize the food particles into a fine food mist, and re-distribute them all over the dishes.
Then, it would bake that concoction onto the dishes at a high temperature.
The dishes almost always had to be scraped off, and then re-run.
Of course, here is where the argument comes in:
Sam thinks that dishes practically need to be hand-washed before they are loaded into the dishwasher.
I think you should be able to just load 'em up.
What good is an appliance that can't do its advertised service?
It is a DISH. WASHER.
Not a you-hand-wash-and-I-will-finish-up-ER.
We replaced the dishwasher with a pretty Kitchenaid one. It cost more, but supposedly you can put a whole cake in it, and it will miraculously wash the cake, platter, and surrounding dishes. Have you seen the commercial?
So, it has been running like a champ.
The first load we went through was exciting.
We both sort-of waited around to see the dishes come out.
I pretended to do work on the computer, and he puttered around the house.
Every twenty minutes or so, we would pass in the kitchen, inventing things to get, so we could see that first batch.
Neither one of us wanted to admit the embarrassing stupidness of wanting to see dishes post-cleanse.
The dishwasher finally indicated that it was in the "cool down" mode.
Both of us were there.
Our plates! How they shimmered!
Our silverware! Spotless!
And our drinking glasses were actually squeaky! For real. They squeaked!
Time has moved on.
The dishwasher is still doing okay.
Occasionally it leaves a stray Spaghetti-O baked onto a bowl.
Or a barely recognizable mushroom.
Sometimes a paper-thin fan of dried spinach embellishing a drinking glass.
And here is where the other argument ensues:
I feel like the dishes are sanitized and clean.
I will flick off that rogue Spaghetti-O and put the dish in the cupboard.
Sam, on the other hand, will put it back in the dishwasher to be re-run.
Makes you want to eat at my house, eh?
Only if Sam has been on dish duty.
Hey, no one has gotten sick. Yet.
8 comments:
i have to admit i'm with sam on the "dish debate" ... i like to clean them all before putting them in the dishwasher. lol! but i have heard that it's better to put them in their with food and all. i don't do it ... but i've heard it!
and only you can make a story about the dishwasher that exciting to read!
I'm with you - it is a sanitized piece of food.
OH YAH,
We don't even need to have this discussion. You know how I feel about the @#%%$ Dish Washers. Bill the repair man told me yesterday that his wife isn't allowed to do the laundry because he doesn't want her to ruin the machine. Bill gets up at 4:30 in the morning to do all his families laundry. Maybe Sam wants to get on board with this idea????
Coming out of lurkdom - here are some things to think about:
1. The dishwasher will last longer if you pre-rinse before putting the dirty dishes in. The manufacturers advertise the fact that it will dissolve a whole cake so you'll actually try it, succeed, and then through continued abuse, wreck it and be forced to buy a new one years before you would have to otherwise. They're smart like that.
2. The dishwasher's job is to wash the dishes. Yours (or Sam's) is to remove the crud off the dishes. If you were washing by hand, you wouldn't throw plates full of food into the dishwater.
3. If you went to a restaurant and they brought out a water glass with a dried on spaghetti-o or spinach leaf would you drink from it? I didn't think so. It goes back in for another wash.
Sorry, I am SOLIDLY in Sam's camp on this one.
Too funny you just keep making me laugh. I am sorry but I am the neurotic one around here I actually pre wash mine by hand and use the diswasher as a sanitizer I just feel like the dishwasher doesn't do a good enough job and I have one of those ones that your suppose to be able to put the whole cake into LOL. But I would still come to your house and eat with you so no worries almost like the tube of tooth paste debate around here!
I am in the new dishwasher faze right now. My old house the dishwasher was a POS!! Nothing was ever dry, and the glasses always had the filmy crap on them. The kind that never comes off even after hand washing in hot water with vinegar. I love my new dishwasher and will enjoy the "honeymoon phase" while it lasts, before it becomes a "quitter"!!
I'm still stuck on the concept of a husband who unloads the dishwasher.
Seriously?
I thought that testosterone prevented the possibility of such a thing.
Apparently I have been mislead.
At any rate, for me it depends. Stray pasta or spinach? I flick it off. But my dishwasher has begun leaving this strange sort of food goo in random cups. It TOTALLY grosses me out to find it in the bottom of mine only after I've filled up the cup with a beverage and then drank enough to see the bottom.
So now I inspect the cups fairly well, and I DO rewash those.
meh. scrape off the big stuff and throw the plates in. I see no point in even using the dishwasher if you are going to wash them first. Sanitize?? and then what? stick them in a cupboard for a few days? They ain't sanitized anymore. ;) Sounds like a waste of time and water and electricity.
Buy yourself some Cascade Complete and let the dishwasher do the work.
BTW, my mom's dishwasher is 10 years old and she's never prewashed a dish in her life.
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