I enjoy the fact that she is cleaner than me, and takes it upon herself to clean all the dishes when she only dirties a few of them (She likes to have them cleaned 2-3 times a day, whereas I’m fine with once every day or even two if there aren’t a lot.) But she seems to have no clue how to properly use a dishwasher.
For one, she puts things like pots, large bowls, and cups on the bottom shelf. Ummm…think for a second, would you? Where does the water come from? And where can’t it go if you put pots, large bowls, and cups on the bottom shelf? I tend to unload it more often than her, so I notice that none of the cups or bowls on the top shelf get clean, so they have to get run again.
Secondly, she overpacks it. Even if she didn’t put things not intended to be on the bottom shelf there, she puts tons of silverware in two of the little bins, instead of using all the bins, and will cram a lot of plates into one corner, even though she has room to spread them out, so once again, things don’t et as clean as they could be.
And finally, the kicker was today. I ran it last night, and used the past of the dishwasher detergent. I went out to run errands, including going to the store and getting more detergent, and when I came back, there was a large puddle of soapy water all over the kitchen floor. Yup, you guessed it, she put regular dish soap in the dishwasher. :smack: :mad:
And she seems to have put it in and then left, cause she’s not here, so now I have to clean it all up myself. Great.
Uh, I thought you were SUPPOSED to put pots and bowls and stuff on the bottom rack. The top rack is for glassware and stuff. At least on every dishwasher I’ve ever had, there’s other water for the top rack.
ETA - she runs the dishwasher 2 or 3 times a day? That’s insane and a huge waste of water and electricity. Unless the two of you together have 38 children.
Seconded on both counts. On every one I’ve ever seen, there’s two “sprinklers”, one for each level. The bottom level has a tube in it to feed the top one.
Trust me, our dishwasher has only one set of sprinklers. I did notice that the center of it telescopes up to reach the top rack, but that part is at best two inches wide right in the center, so by itself it can’t reach the outer glassware. (Not to mention she often puts a large pot or bowl right over the center, so it can’t telescope up.) The fact that when she runs it, most of the glasses still have crud in them, yet when I run it they come out clean, supports my theory. (It’s an old dishwasher, so that’s probably why it needs to be loaded correctly.)
I think she must be related to my husband - it’s eerie. I reallyreallyreally try not to let it bother me, given that left to my own devices, I’ll be buried in several days’ worth of unwashed crockery before washing up. But damn it, part of the reason it’s so quick and easy for him to wash the dishes is he does such a crappy job of it.
I’m also nonplussed that the man who can manipulate all the luggage of our household so it fits in a Taurus trunk is so bad at loading dishes efficiently. I do not in any way overpack, but one load of dishwashing on my watch is easily two on his. And then I have to scrutinize all the glasses before getting a drink, and wind up rewashing half of them.
As a side question, should there be crud there for the dishwasher to remove? I don’t wash the dishes before I put them in the washer, but I darn sure rinse them and make sure that there’s no real crud.
Of course I’ve always had older dishwashers and none of them have been capable of removing crud.
As to the main topic, a bowl over the telescoping bit is a definite no-no. You have my sympathy over having to clean up the alternate soap mess. And unless you’re doing a lot of from-scratch cooking that dirties a lot of prep equipment, there shouldn’t be a need to run the thing 2-3 times a day. If you’re running it quickly, so that the crud on the dishes will be soft - stop that. Clean the crud off of your dishes and they can wait until there’s enough in the washer to be worth running.
Personally, I pack in as many dishes as I can. As long as there’s not two in the same slot, you shouldn’t have to spread them out any further. Of course, your dishwasher may vary. I’ve had one or two that weren’t worth running at all, and I ended up giving up and just washing the dishes by hand. If yours is close to not being worth it, you have my sympathy for that, too.
OH, oh, oh, I’ve got one. I have been trying to teach my 22 year old son how to load the dishwasher all of his life. I’m sure some of the reason he does such a crappy job is to discourage me from asking (BTW he recently got shown to the door). As we know it is a lot more work to clean dishes that have had food baked on by the dry cycle, than dishes that have not been washed poorly in the first place.
To the griping - After years of never being happy with the way his dishes come out of the dishwasher, it came to light that he was running them without adding detergent - he constantly loads dishes like pots and cups facing up so they just fill with water - and the last time he did dishes he nestled four dirty bowels together and then put them right side up to collect water … pant, pant. And to add insult to injury he examines every dish and piece of cutlery he uses under a light to make sure they are clean enough for him to use. Also I’m pretty sure that sometimes he has deliberately put dirty dishes back into the cupboards to avoid having to load them.
You definitely can’t put anything over the telescoping part, then it won’t work. You ought to be fine otherwise. And I’ve read you should not have to prewash - it just wastes water. If you do need to prewash your dishwasher sucks and you need a new one.
My old roommate knew how to run the dishwasher, just not how to empty it. Then eventually she seemed to forget how to do any dishes at all, but she remembered how to yell at me when I left a rinsed off plate in the sink.
My boyfriend and his roommate pack their crappy dishwasher way too full. Nothing ever gets that clean. And his roommate funkifies a lot of dishes without a good rinse soon afterwards. I don’t like cleaning up after his roommate (don’t mind helping bf with his stuff cause he’s not gross) but sometimes I have to just so we can cook dinner without our stuff being contaminated by his mess. Bf is always cleaning up after his roommate and I feel bad for him.
At my parents’ house, cups and bowls (plastic) and smaller stuff goes on top rack. Plates and a couple glasses go on bottom. Pots and pans are handwashed, pretty much always. I was taught plastic stuff had to go on top cause it’d melt on the bottom rack. Dunno how true, but don’t want to experiment.
This thread mystifies me. I have never found using a dishwasher to be challenging. And yes, I am a man. Obviously stuff goes face down for drainage! How hard is that? And I have not found it necessary to pre-rinse anything; if there’s a lot of crud, I scrape it off into the trash.
My bf’s problem with the dishwasher is his application of detergent. We have two doors, just like most people, but the “Main Wash” one doesn’t open fully during the cycle. He fills each one up, runs it, and opens it to find a stream of detergent running down into the bottom of the washer. So what does he do? Puts detergent into the “pre-wash” cup, and runs the thing again. Ugh.
I want to hear more about the 2-3 times a day factor. I have 2 roommates (so there’s 3 of us), and we run ours 2-3 times a week. What in the hell are you two eating?
Beats me. All I know is often times I come downstairs and it’s running, and I will sometimes hear/see it running later on at night before I go to bed. I will talk to her next time I see her, but that could be days from now. Differing work schedules and her having a serious bf makes for long gaps between seeing each other. But at the very least a note not to put regular dish detergent in the dishwasher went on the fridge.
You must have utilities included. It’s the only possible explanation. Because if you were paying for the power and the water, one thinks we’d have seen a thread before now.
:smack: