So, what does the dishwasher do?

[Xist]

Mom has the television on all day. There is one ad I keep hearing where a cute girl talks about her mom happily washing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

There is another ad talking about dishwashers getting clogged from food particles.

There are those that claim that rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher wastes water and can even reduce how well the dishwasher cleans.*

If you pre-rinse, you waste water, but if you don't you risk damaging your dishwasher. I have read a couple of pages where owners of appliance repair companies say that the most common problem they see with dishwashers is trapped food.

So, use paper plates?

Don't use plates, eat leaning over the sink?

"Dinner's ready! Everybody eat out of the same pot!"

*I read the claim that soap cannot stick if there isn't food. How can the dishwasher clean the plate if it is already clean?!

Well, advertisements are not public-service announcements. They want your money.

[Frank Lee]

Back in the day when I bought my house the first thing I did was throw out the dishwasher. I'LL be the dishwasher, thank you very much.

[Xist]

Did you slide a big garbage can into the open space?

When I lived alone I used my dishwasher as a big dishrack.

[Angel And The Wolf]

Dishwashers can act as sanitizers, but for us, our washed dishes are stored in it.

[RedDevil]

I'm the odd one out I guess, we do use our dishwasher as intended.
But not for Teflon coated pans, things with wooden handles or prints etc and the odd bowl that just takes up too much space. Most of the stuff gets in though.

Every evening I have a small hand wash, and I use the spoils to rinse the worst of the plates. I used to clean the sieves regularly, but by scraping off the spoils they just stay clean so I rarely ever check them now, let alone clean them.

When we rent a house in a holiday park with a dishwasher the first thing I do is check it out. If it stinks I check the filter, which is then usually covered in vegetable and meat chunks and the like. Hey people, that stuff does not dissolve. It isn't a garbage can...

Anyway it uses some 7 gallon (27 liter) of water each time, which is less than I'd need to wash its load by hand by reasonable standards of cleanliness (500 times as clean as boyscouts standard)
I only have to use it every other day for my family of 4; it is pretty loaded then though.

All in all I'm happy to use the dishwasher.
I had to mend the wires that broke at the door hinge point, replace buttons that failed, and when it is cold it needs a batch of hot water (usually what remains of the hand washing) to unlock the pump level sensor valve for water level or it won't start. Sometimes I wish it dies for good so I can replace it by a better one. But if I can mend it... you know.

[oil pan 4]

My wife would get very mad if I let the dog lick the plates and I rinse them off and put them away.

I have to occasionally pull the spray bars off and pick bits of mineral, small pieces of food and plastic shavings out of the spray holes.
I drilled out the smallest spray holes that were always getting clogged to a slightly larger size and that seems to have taken care of most of their clogging.

[Stubby79]

Rinse off anything chunky, let the dishwasher deal with whatever's left.

No, mushrooms won't dissolve in the dishwasher.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Anyway it uses some 7 gallon (27 liter) of water each time, which is less than I'd need to wash its load by hand by reasonable standards of cleanliness...

Why would you need that much water to wash a load of dishes? I would figure maybe 3-4 gallons, which usually includes a few pots or big bowls that wouldn't go in a dishwasher anyway.

Of course as a single person, if I waited until I had a full dishwasher load, the food residue would either be dried hard & impossible to remove, or moldy. And it's not like the water is used up: it goes into the septic tank, eventually leaves through the leach line, and waters trees & bushes in the back yard :-)

[RedDevil]

Yeah. It isn't just dishes. We hand-washed all twice a day or so, and the sauce pans etc. typically need precleaning or they'll spoil the dishwater. I'm pretty certain we used more water than our dishwasher does.

Before I met my wife I often kept it simple. One plate for breakfast, one plate for dinner, one pan if it wasn't pizza, one glass. I had a lot of plates and stuff, I always cleared the chunks and bad stuff but from there it could easily wait in a pile for a week. (let's say week )

We've got kids now and the dishwasher just beeped - it has done its job for the weekend.
It yielded 24 plates and 1 saucer, 2 big bowls, 8 small bowls, 1 cooking pan and lid, 22 knives, 14 forks, 5 spoons, 4 spatulas, a mixer, 6 glasses, 5 mugs and beakers, 2 cheese slicers and some odds and ends.
Mind you this was a relatively small one because the kids have taken a fancy for plastic drinking glasses with swimming fish in the base that can't be dishwashed and my wife was off for a trip with her choir + simple cooking (pancakes!).
If I had to do it by hand it would have taken me an hour at least. One sink-full would have cooled down beyond being usable, even if it were clean enough.

[RedDevil]

My parents bought a dishwasher in the same week I left home.
Pure coincidence they said.