Your minimal use of dishes and utensils seems a bit unusual but I’d say it’s at least partially driven by an ingrained habit intended to minimize dishwashing. Normally it’s amazing how many dishes, bowls, glasses, and pots and pans and cutlery one can go through in just a single day for a single person. Plus miscellaneous items like spatulas, tongs, and cutting boards. (I have a synthetic cutting board that I keep on top of my big wooden butcher block precisely because it can be dishwashed; when I use it to bring stuff in from the outdoor grill it can get really messy.)
In any given day one could of course hand-wash all the items, set them out on a dish rack to dry, and say, there, that wasn’t so bad. Multiply that by every day of your life and it starts to add up. If I have a big dinner with multiple guests the dishwasher can be a lifesaver, but on ordinary days it’s just an incremental convenience that I find extremely useful.
On top of that, a dishwasher washes things in very hot water with strong detergent and dries them in high heat, rendering the items not only sparkling clean but more hygienic.
The in-laws are in their 80s. MIL is 83, FIL is 86. Neither moves well. FIL in particular does not see well. And during our last visit, in April, there were several times where they brought dishes out of the cupboard at mealtime that had visible stuff on them - one time, a rather noticeable blob of something tomato-based.
In short, they are NOT doing a good job keeping up with the dishes themselves.
8 years back when they moved in, they were in somewhat better shape, physically, and truly COULD handle the dishes.
It’s an ongoing battle to make sure they are taking care of themselves as well as possible, from a thousand miles away, when they have not always been truthful to the family about how things are going. Example: MIL nearly “stubborned herself to death” a few years ago by lying to the family (just a slight case of multiple myeloma.
Without going into details, there are numerous issues the extended family is concerned about. We’re trying to keep them in their home as long as possible, as they are independent-minded, but at such a distance, it’s quite hard.
SIL is tasked with persuading them that they need the dishwasher. We’re tasked with making it work (solving the “get it out of the box” issue).
They don’t have a lot of counter space either; one of the things we’ve all discussed is getting a rolling cart for the thing. There’s a spot where they have a small shelving unit right now, where it could go - we’d need to reorganize things a bit while we’re there, to make sure they can access the things that are on the shelf now.
We’re also going to go against their wishes and set up Nomorobo on their phones - despite MIL refusing when I offered to do it in an earlier visit. MIL has proven herself vulnerable to scams; this is one area where FIL’s deafness helps them, as he does not answer the phone, on the other hand he’s more cognitively intact.
OK, that does explain “they really do need a dishwater even if they don’t realize it”.
As for sanitizing handwashed dishes: bleach rinse and rubber gloves. But if they are having trouble keeping up with the housework that’s not a good option for them, either.
You’re right on that. My parents will get a glass for water, drink the water, put the glass in the dishwasher and get a new glass the next time they want water. If it’s something other than water they’ll add the extra step of rinsing it out before putting it in the dishwasher, because they are serial rinsers.
It always astonishes me how many dishes they use in a day, and I’d say it’s definitely driven by the existence of their dishwasher. Dad could never and would never put up with dishes sitting in the sink waiting to be used again.
To answer the OP’s question, I have an older house that didn’t come with a dishwasher, so I have one of these. I’ve gone through two, actually.
The first one was a Danby. It only lasted maybe 2-3 years, then it broke literally just after the warranty expired. And also the plastic door cracked, which is apparently where the rinse aide reservoir was, so it leaked out all over the counter. Maybe it would have been worth fixing if I knew how to repair it myself, but the cost of having a professional repair it exceeded the cost of a new dishwasher.
So I just replaced it. The one I have now is an EdgeStar DWP60ES. That one I’ve had for something like 11-12 years, and it’s had absolutely no problems whatsoever.
One note about countertop dishwashers in general is that larger dinner plates may not fit in it.
It would be more work, but can you add a single dishdrawer on the side (left or right) of the sink? If it’s a single upper dishdrawer, it wouldn’t require them to reach down as much.
I’m not aware of any specific deficiencies of countertop dishwashers in that respect, but all dishwashers clean by the simple expedient of moderately high-pressure hot water (but weak enough to be safe for delicate glassware) combined with the fairly strong detergent mixes found in modern pods. For that reason I don’t trust even my full-size dishwasher to properly clean pots and pans without giving them a quick scrub first, either with a bristle brush or with a steel pad for really burned-on crud. Even if scrubbing isn’t absolutely necessary, a bit of a scrub of the bottom of my beautiful KitchenAid saucepan gives the washed product a mirror-like shine it wouldn’t otherwise have (the bottom sometimes looks dull). I have, however, recently taken the pod “no rinsing required” advertising at their word and put in some pretty dirty dishes without rinsing, and they’ve turned out fine.
Also, as an aside, I never put non-stick pans in the dishwasher. In fact all I do is wipe them down with damp paper towels. As a result, my favourite (and cheap) T-Fal frying pan is as perfectly coated and non-stick after more than 15 years as it was when brand new. Fried eggs just slide right off.
The main deficiency with countertop dishwashers isn’t in how well it cleans them; like you said it’s the same as any other dishwasher in that respect. The deficiency with a countertop dishwasher is that some of your larger pots and pans may simply not fit inside it.
We have a countertop dishwasher that Hubby had to convince me to buy. Boy, was I wrong. He wanted one because he claims his hands are too big to properly wash glasses. We were both mortified the first time we used it because we didn’t realize how dingy our dishes were, especially our coffee cups.
It’s a NOVETE. We’ve owned it for a year with no issues. You can hook it up to a water line or fill it manually; we do the latter.
I don’t mind hand washing my skillets, and wouldn’t put them in a dishwasher anyway. My sauce pans do fit in it nicely, though. Our dinner plates are not oversized so they fit in the washer, too.
Next to our dual fuel generator, this is the best money we’ve spent in the last couple of years.
I had to go look at the Amazon page to figure out what the “baby care” cycle was for. I’d never heard of such a thing. Judging from the picture it’s for sanitizing baby’s teething toys.
Adrian Monk needs that. I don’t recall if they showed him putting fruits and veggies in the dishwasher in the actual show, but he definitely did it in the short video “Mr. Monk Shelters in Place” they made during the early days of the pandemic.
The one I have offers 6 different cycles, but they’re all normal, boring ones. I don’t have a fruit and vegetable or a baby care one. At least I don’t think so; they’re all represented by cryptic symbols, so I have no idea what some of them are. The symbols are:
The word “eco” – Ok, that’s obviously the eco/energy saver cycle.
A stack of dishes – I assume probably the “normal” cycle.
A wine glass – Obviously glass
A pot – probably pots and pans
A wine glass and a cup, or maybe a bowl – No idea.
A dishwasher with two drops of water above it – ???
There was definitely a trend for awhile of replacing all words on an appliance with little icons that, presumably, someone thought was universal but aren’t actually.
Can we just go back to words? If they aren’t in the users language google translate could probably help out with that. I have never been a fan of trying to decipher the extra-terrestrial alien language icons on a lot of appliances.