First, I need to rinse everything ahead of time.
Second, large things that take up a lot of room must be washed by hand, so that the room is freed up for lots of small things.
Third, knives must be loaded with the pointy bit facing down.
I have no idea how I’ve managed all these years doing it incorrectly. I basically just put stuff in, and when there’s no more room left I turn the dishwasher on. Of course this technique works just as well, when no one’s looking.
I can’t load the dishwasher properly either. You can’t wash the Teflon pots in the dishwasher, apparently. And all the plastic dishes have to go on the top so they don’t melt into an unrecognizable mess (I for one, think that would be cool.)
I also can’t stir the pots properly. It has to be done with plastic or wood, because metal scratches the Teflon and then everyone will die of cancer.
I am also not capable of getting food out of the refrigerator without Destroying the Known Universe with gales of freezing air. Apparently, every time I open the refrigerator, money falls out and floats away into the pockets of our electric company.
There’s a lot I don’t know how to do when it comes to the kitchen.
Not cool, as the smell of melting plastic is intolerable to most people and lingers for days. But unless you bought your plastic at the dollar store or inherited it from your mothers 1960 kitchen, its probably dishwasher safe and unlikely to melt in the dishwasher.
(My first husband told me I didn’t do laundry right - which ended with him doing all the laundry when I said “FINE! YOU DO IT!” Brainiac4 has come close, but has come to realize that a different way is not necessarily the wrong way to load the dishwasher - or perhaps he’s just realized that he doesn’t want to get stuck with all the dishes and laundry if he becomes too critical of my methods.)
LOL- This reminds me of when DH and I switched and he became the stay-at-home-parent.
He did not like to get pointers from me about how to get things done. Attempts to make suggestions were met with charges of ‘telling him what to do’, ’ bossing him around’ or something similar, so I just shut up.
One day, he showed me his new technique for mopping the kitchen floor that involved pouring a cup of water from the sink onto the floor, and then smearing the water around with one of the dishtowels hanging from the oven. Using his feet.
(Whenever I tell this story in person, the women always get ‘big eyed’ or put a hand to their faces. The men usually just have a look on their faces that says “Whut?”)
He said it was a hassle, getting the mop out and all.
I DID NOT SAY A WORD.
(Even though I totally felt like pointing out, as DH has always said, that there is a proper tool for every job.)
About three months later, DH was doing some laundry and held up one of the dish towels while saying “Look at these dish towels. They are gross!”
“Ya,” I chimed in. “It looks like someone’s been mopping the floor with them!”
He got a funny look on his face while his eyes slid from towel to floor and back to towel again.
AND I DID NOT SAY A WORD… except to offer to buy some new towels.
Got no comment on the rest, because if it works, it works, but it seems to me that this might be a good idea if you’re not wanting to risk accidentally jabbing yourself in the hand if you’re not paying attention when you’re taking stuff out from the dishwasher. It seems to me that this is more a safety tip than a getting dishes clean/making maximum use of space type rule.
Edited to add: ** Ca3799** good for you, and you made me laugh too.
I can load a dishwasher like a mofo ( I am good) but what I’ve never been able to do is fold t-shirts in that fancy both-sleeves-turned-in-towards-the-back way. Good thing I’m the only boss in my house- I can do things the wrong way and nobody can say shit about it.
I don’t even try to make the bed anymore. It just gets stripped and remade anyway.
And towel folding. I’ll do all the laundry up to and including pulling stuff straight from the dryer and depositing it in the drawer/closet where it’s supposed to go, but towels stay in a pile on the bed until She Who Can Fold gets to it.
My friend’s crazy brother called the police on her for “attempted murder” something because of the pointy-side-up knives in the dish washer. My dad is rather fanatical about how his is loaded. I’m happy if I can close the door with out leaning into it like a linebacker during a game-winning tackle.
Except for my fancy schmancy frying pan, which will be ruined if I put it in the dishwasher…all cheap teflon is fair game though.
My girlfriend has magic housekeeping powers. She can take a blanket with four totally identical sides and acertain somehow which side is the “top” and which isn’t. I do not posess said power, so I cannot make the bed correctly according to her. As a matter of fact, I somehow made it for 25 years in my own without being able to, get this, do absolutely anything correctly. I can’t vaccuum, do laundry, wash floors or as a matter of fact do anything without her looking at me like I somehow snuck a Downs child into the bathroom and gave him powerful cleaning chemicals with which to render the bathroom unusable.
My job it to move furniture out of the way and not use areas of the house that are already cleaned until futher notice.
It was literally decades ago when my husband complained vehemently that I was ironing his shirts wrong. “If you can’t do any better than this, you might just as well roll them up and throw them in the corner like this!!!” (Throws balled-up shirt into the corner. “Fine, then,” says I, and have never ironed another shirt of his since. I don’t throw 'em in the corner, I simply lay them on top of his dresser for him to do with as he pleases.
Of course, he DOES do laundry wrong. He ruined a white tablecloth my mother gave me by putting it in the wash with something dark red, and he ruined a number of silk blouses by washing them with hot water. I threw a fit at that last, then later apologized for my outburst and just let him know that he could ruin all the silk shirts he wanted, but that I liked them, and would simply have to buy more, and by the way they cost a lot.
There is a correct way to load a dishwasher, BTW. Check the manual. Basic concept is face the dirtiest side of everything toward the sprayer, and don’t block spray access. Also don’t overload or half of everything will still be dirty. I used to laugh a people who pre-washed their dishes. Back then I had a really good dw that would handle anything execpt, say, bones. I think it had a built-in garbage disposal. The one I have now, if most of the stuff is not rinsed off, it just gets redeposited. Pain in the A.
There was an online German video about an old woman who fell on her dishwasher when the knives were pointed up. It kind of traumitized me…anyone remember it?
I can’t cook or bake. I suck at it. I can do no-bake cookies, but I burned my fudge and seriously messed up a shortbread cookie recipe this year.
I overcook noodles that go in casseroles. Even recipes confuse me sometimes. I’ll stand in the kitchen to make a cake or something and honestly not know what to bake something in, what type of bowl to mix it in and I’ll have to ask my husband what type of spoon to use.
I never cook any kind of meat, unless it’s ground beef in a skillet. I can’t even cook a proper hamburger.
As my dad (god rest his soul) used to say, “You’d fuck up Jello!”
That is exactly how I mop especially when no one else is around. I can’t load a dishwasher worth a damn either. I just pile things in in random ways until nothing else will fit. Close the door. Turn it on. Ta Da!
I am an expert ironer though which seems like it is a harder skill. I can iron in several different styles and female family members get me to iron their clothes for important occasions.
I cannot fold fitted sheets; I just can’t do it. I can wad them up, though, and that is just what I do. I LIKE sleeping on wrinkled sheets so leave me alone about it.
My parents load their dishwasher with pointy cutlery pointed down. There are no small children running around, so it’s not a safety issue. Years ago, the rule was to put things in pointy end up. This avoided the problem of the basket getting damaged.
My dishwasher is basically a sponge and dish soap. I put things in the cutlery basket pointy end up. That way, the parts that touch food aren’t resting on the scummy bottom. Many many times I’ve reached up to get something out of a cabinet and found myself poised over a sharp knife. But hey, it’s a good tradeoff. I’d hate to get germs and die.
My husband has declared that doing the dishes after dinner is his job, for which I am most grateful. However, I had to ask him to just stack the scraped, rinsed dishes so that I can load them in the dishwasher myself. He’ll nest things together so that the inner surfaces can’t possibly get touched by water. He’ll put a huge bowl or pot over a bunch of little items, effectively shielding them from spray. He’ll place items between the sprayer and the detergent dispenser, thereby guaranteeing that most of the powder will remain stuck in the door.
I’ve tried to explain - criminy, he’s an engineer and he’s better at fluid dynamics than I am, but the dishwasher is a puzzle. So he’ll hand wash the really big stuff, de-gunk the rest, and I’ll load, then empty all the clean stuff the next day. And on the occasions when he loads anyway, I end up rearranging when I have to put more things in, so it’s no big. Plus he’ll scrub the bathroom, which is my most hated chore. So he’s a keeper.
Come May, I’ll have to teach my new son-in-law - we’ll see how that goes.
My mother, who is Super-Housekeeper - only owns enough fitted sheets to go on each bed. When she washes them (weekly on the beds that get used, after use on the guest beds - its just her and Dad in a six bedroom house now) she plans her day to make sure that the sheets will be dry and go back on the bed (and she will have no guests in the house to have to see an unmade bed - that would be shocking!) because fitted sheets don’t fold.