I often wonder, when I’m soaping down and scrubbing dishes to put in the dishwasher, whether it’s worth the effort to even turn the thing on. If I were to put anything with a noticeable stain or hardened food directly into the appliance, I’d be lucky to see any improvement. This totally puzzled me as a child, as my mother would be irate with me because I didn’t wash the dishes before putting them in.
Do they really do very much? Should I be saving on my power & water bill by putting them straight into the cupboard?
Well, your mistake is that you’re washing the dishes before you put them in a machine that washes dishes. Just remove any major chunks of food from plates and flatware and put them in the dishwasher.
I was planning on asking the opposite question very soon. Mine was “How Do Modern Dishwashers Work So Well?”. There is a huge variation in the effectiveness of dishwashers especially when you consider the older ones to some of the newer ones. I have tried to push the limit on mine and haven;t really hit it yet. The only things that it won’t clean are very baked on, hardened foods but I cannot fault it for that.
I have trouble figuring how it work. I could understand a pressure-washing system like a car-wash but that doesn’t explain how I can have a small, light Tupperware piece that gets to in very dirty on the top rack and yet comes out clean and stays in place. High pressure streams of water would blow light things around.
Yeah, toss the bones and whatnot and put the dishes in. Some dishwasher do work better than others, though. We have had two cheap dishwashers that you did have to do a bit of prewashing with (and which never got the dishes dry, even with the “dry” cycle on). When we bough one for the last house we lived in we got a midrange one and it was much, much better.
Jet-Dry helps. I put it in when I find my dishes aren’t getting totally cleaned. You might also have some grime in the mechanisms, making the machine less effective. They sell dishwashing machine cleaners for that, or you can try taking it apart and cleaning it yourself.
The OP did specify that his dishwasher has a problem with dried-on food, so he’s not taking his dishes straight from the dining room table (unless he leaves them there overnight)…
Even so, most dishwashers worthy of the name should be able to, you know, wash dishes. Most of the ones that I’ve used would gladly take the enamel clear off of some plates, so a little dried-on food didn’t stand a chance.
I never do anything to my dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher. And, in my case (since I’m a messy bachelor) the crud has typically sat several days, since I wash my dishes in the dishwasher when I’ve run out of clean dishes. Once in a while I find a little hardened crud on silverware or a little egg yolk baked on plates, but only occasionally and never very much.
We replaced our dishwasher last year. It’s entirely possible that the old one was over 15 years old. We had to rinse the plates first, then run the dishwasher. Even then, we were getting really bad results. When it got to the point where we needed to run an additional rinse cycle of the dishes AFTER they were done, we knew we had waited to long to replace it.
We replaced with a mid-range machine. Now, the only things that need attention before going in are mugs with dried hot chocolate at the bottom.
Sounds like it’s time for you to get a new machine, The Octagon.
Just to chip in, I’ve had dishwashers (usually in apartments, installed by cheap landlords) that essentially seemed to have no purpose except to swish some water around. On the other hand, a good quality modern machine, with a good detergent, will do a simply magnificent job. (Just got our new one installed, top of the line, cost a fortune but boy am I pleased.)
Quality of the unit is it. The unit I installed when I redid my kitchen at my last house was a top of line unit, and even so the price (then) didn’t seem too out of this world. I could pack up to its capacity during the course of a week, run it, and everything would come out perfectly, without any pre-rinsing in the sink. I seem to recall it had its own built in quasi-disposer thing in the drain.
At my home now, though, I have the cheap P.O.S. that the contractor put in when the house was built back in the 80’s. I’ve replaced all of the appliances except for this one, but it’s next on the list. If I don’t pre-rinse, nothing gets cleaned. Beyond that, I can’t figure out how to put more than four dinner plates into the thing – I could wash four dinner plates myself. When I get around to doing the kitchen (hopefully when I’m done here in this foreign country), I know exactly which dishwasher I’ll buy – the same Whirlpool I put into the old house.
The Octagon, if you’ve got that far before loading the machine, why not just rinse the dishes and set them to dry? Seems like a waste of energy to wash them twice.
Another comfort about machine washes also is that you’re subjecting the dishes to a much higher, organism killing temperature during the drying cycle than a simple hand wash and ambient temp drying method could ever achieve.
If you operate in this mode, it also helps a lot not to overload the thing. If, by the time you’re out of dishes, the dishwasher also gets crammed full, it leaves a lot of crud on things, particularly the silverware that you loaded up all the little baskets to bursting with. If you run a little more often, so that there’s a bit of space around what it’s washing, it does a better job.
We’re having a Bosch delivered and installed today (courtesy of the missus, thank you very much!)
Given what that sucker cost, it had better clear the damn table and put the dishes back in the cabinet.
Din, I’ve had a Bosch for about 6 months now, their TOTL model. It cleans fantastically and is supremely quiet, the main reason I chose it, but it doesn’t dry nearly as well as I’d like. I had repairmen come out twice and finally the second one, who owned a Bosch himself, said that’s just the way they are. He still thought it was the best DW of any, but drying is an issue. It’s acceptable for most items but plastics like Tupperware come out with drops on them. I wish it worked better but it’s a small price to pay for the quiet.
If your washer can’t clean the dishes on its own, dont waste money throwing your dishes in there. You’ve already scrubbed them, so just rinse them off, give 'em a wipe and put them in the cupboard.
The dishwasher is a noisy waste of time and money. A wife is a much cheaper alternative. It does a better job for a lot less, is much quieter, and doesn’t take as long.
I have an ancient dishwasher, and drying doesn’t seem to be a problem, but one thing which might help the drying cycle - right after it finishes washing and starts the drying cycle, open the door and let a bunch of steam out. I sometimes do that if I want to use something that was just washed, and have learned that I have to hang back for a few seconds watching the steam billow out of the thing. Once the steam has stopped, the dishes are practically dry already.
Once in a while I find a little hardened crud on silverware or a little egg yolk baked on plates, but only occasionally and never very much.