I never had a problem with dishwashers, but I never really challenged them hard… until one day many years ago.
I saw a Consumer Reports video clip where they were talking about how they tested dishwashers. They were putting in the absolute gunkiest items, and everything was coming out spotless.
So, I decided to start upping the challenge for my own (well, my landlord’s ) dishwasher. By the end, I was just shaking any large debris into the trash and sticking the dirty items straight in. I never had any problems with stuff not getting clean. I continue this rapscallion attitude toward dishwashers to this day, and I’m happy for it.
It is important, of course, to load the dishwasher in a sane way. A good dishwasher is pretty close to magic, but it’s not entirely magic.
I like something (or someone) to do household chores for me.
If there’s any chunks left on a plate (not often - I’m a voracious eater ), I scrape and hold it briefly under a running cold tap. Then (along with the rest of he crockery) it goes in the dishwasher.
This has worked perfectly for 23 years (I bought a decent machine. )
Hand washed dishes don’t get a good steaming cycle at the end, they just cool down and collect bacteria and mold spores on their surfaces. Even crappy dishwashers get the dishes wet and hot enough to kill stuff off. I rinse the dishes off thoroughly before they go in the dishwasher, but they come out a heck of a lot cleaner then when the go in. Plus, when you go to sell the house, one with a dishwasher has one more thing the house without doesn’t.
My wife has a dishwasher that she bought into our marriage which seems fairly not-new. I’ve no idea of its age, but I would guess at least 5 years (she’s not home right now so I can’t ask her). We don’t rinse unless the dish is unusually crusty, and the dishwasher cleans them fine. Most of the time (99%). Once in a great while I’ll find a little tiny speck of food on a dish that didn’t get washed off. We do use the “extra hot” and “heated dry” settings, along with those little plastic cubes of detergent. If the dishes seem especially dirty I’ll throw an extra cube in the “pre-wash” section. It works great and saves us a lot of work.
We do hand-wash our cooking pots and frying pans though. I am not sure if there’s a specific reason for that - i.e; harder for the dishwasher to get those clean - I’ll have to ask my wife. She never put those in the DW so I never did either.
I’ve never prewashed, just scraped the plates into the trash. And both of my dishwashers (he first one lasted over 20 years) had grinders for for any food residue left after scraping.
Many people do not put non-stick pans and seasoned pans in the dishwasher because the detergents sandblast them and the steam removes the seasoning. Find china is not put in the dishwasher by some people because it is supposedly too rough. Wooden spoons and old style rubber (not new silicon) spatulas can also be deteriorated by the heat.
Same w/ the crocks for slow cookers.
Know what you CAN put in the dishwasher? Up to 20 lbs of potatoes that all need scrubbing. Make sure there’s no rinse aid in the reservoir and of course no detergent, run them through the Rinse cycle. This is helpful when you have a bunch of people to feed or have tendinitis/carpal tunnel inflammation, like me; they don’t get cooked this way, so they’ll keep happily in the bottom drawer of the fridge, ready for prep b/c they’re already clean.
Actually, I remember someone suggesting preparing a fish fillet in a foil packet, putting it on the top rack and running it through a cycle, to steam cook the fish.
My dishwasher is pushing 20 now. I never prewash and I routinely overstuff it full of grimey stuff. Everything still comes out spotless. Anyone who says dishwashers don’t work had never had a dishwasher.
Dishwashers made in the 1960s were so crappy you really did have to pre-wash dishes if you wanted them to come out clean. I know because we had one like that when I was growing up. It was almost exactly the same amount of trouble as washing by hand, so we hardly ever used it. Dishwashers made since the late 1980s are much better, and pre-washing or even pre-rinsing isn’t really required, but I know people who still do it because that’s the way they’ve always done it. I find the only things that need pre-treatment are burnt-on/stuck-on pots and pans, and for some reason, anything that has egg on it.
My family has replaced, or had major repairs done to the dishwasher, about every five years. Same for our washing machines. Our dryer, though, has lasted 30+ years!
If you’ve replaced a working dishwasher every few years, then you simply never owned one long enough to kill it.
I love that the last post in that thread is by Threadkiller.
My last dishwasher was original to the house - 1989 construction. I replaced it in October as part of my remodel.
) dishwasher. By the end, I was just shaking any large debris into the trash and sticking the dirty items straight in. I never had any problems with stuff not getting clean. I continue this rapscallion attitude toward dishwashers to this day, and I’m happy for it.
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