I Cram Everything Into the Dishwasher When You're Not Here.....

[Yllaria]

My dishwasher is old. It was never able to handle non-prerinsed dishes. In the last month it has deteriorated to not washing even if prerinsed.

I am now doing dishes by hand. So it goes.

[Mooch]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

… And then it dawned on me – my dad thought that during the wash cycle, the whole washing machine was completely filled with water, and then something something, and the dishes come out clean.

That is pretty damned funny.

My only dishwasher complaint about my wife is that she leaves a TON of space between dishes - mainly glasses on the top rack. And we wash a lot of glasses.

If I go in afterwards (as I often do) and consolidate space, you can fit almost a third more dishes in there.

I never complain, but if she catches me consolidating - she calls me the Dishwasher Inspector/Dictator/whatever.

For the record: we don’t pre-rinse. Just scrape n’ stuff.

[UncleRojelio]

@xanthous

I only did a quick skim and didn’t see it posted here, but my sister has a dishwasher with a garbage disposal in it. They throw stuff in there with chunks on it and don’t bat an eye.

I could be wrong and your sister may have some uber dishwasher but I think your sister misunderstands this aspect of her dishwasher. Most modern dishwashers have a small disposal type device in the drain that can macerates the chunky bits in the drain water. The drain water then drains into the real garbage disposal under the sink.

Being that my dishwasher is like what I described above, I just throw everything in there and turn it on without pre-rinsing. If there are stubborn bits on a dish afterwards, I just leave it in for the next run.

[gigi]

@Troy_McClure_SF

My roommate is not allowed to run the dishwasher. We came to this conclusion when he ran the dishwater with about 12 ounces of brownie still in the pan and it didn’t work until we called the landlord to fix it. (I refused to make the call, because I didn’t want some repairman yelling at me for doing something that stupid.)

Heh. When Grandma moved into the nursing home, Pop was on his own to clean out her apartment. He had this obsessive idea of putting anything food-related down the garbage disposal (even though she had free garbage pickup from a utility room down the hall - assisted living residence). Needless to say the bag of rice didn’t do wonders for the disposal. :smack:

[Miss_Woodhouse]

I would love a better dishwasher. One of these days I’d like one that can handle oatmeal goop without leaving flakes of oatmeal on the dishes. We have oatmeal for breakfast at least three times a week, so it’s a bit of an issue.

[teela_brown]

I’d sure like to know why our flatware is starting to come out of the dishwasher all hazy and filmy. I’ve run vinegar through the thing a couple of times, with no improvement.

And yeah, I’m not obsessive about getting every bit of gunk off the dishes before they go in there. However, I’ve noticed if I leave any cooked rice on anything, the dishwasher will pulverize it and mix it into a slurry and redeposit it over all the dishes. After they dry in the drying cycle, the slurry has baked into a gritty residue over everything.

Also, peanut butter and egg yolk are way too sticky. Dishes bearing these goops always get hand-washed.

[xanthous]

@UncleRojelio

I could be wrong and your sister may have some uber dishwasher but I think your sister misunderstands this aspect of her dishwasher. Most modern dishwashers have a small disposal type device in the drain that can macerates the chunky bits in the drain water. The drain water then drains into the real garbage disposal under the sink.

You are probably correct.

[bink]

teela brown, try the Ecover dishwasher tablets. We never get that residue anymore.
In the meantime, use half as much of the powder as you’re using now; that’ll keep it from building up any more.