We have an older row house. One bathroom that was added on years ago, a small kitchen. We do not want to put a lot of money into it. (It is the lowest-priced home in the township by my figuring and I don’t want to mess that up.)
But I came across this. A sort of mini-dishwasher. Take a look at it and tell me what you think. Neat Euro-style appliance or a tiny ripoff bit of junk.
what do you all think?
It looks a bit like the sanitizing machines used in dentists’ offices, and the reviews are resoundingly positive, as well as well-written and applicable. If I were in the market I’d probably go for it.
We have owned several dishwashers, and yes - I have seen (older) versions of this when I lived in Berlin ages ago.
Honestly, I have a hard time imagining the dimensions. I would have to take a tape measure to the kitchen when I am home next.
I can’t judge that one based on the picture, but I’ve seen other countertops that probably weren’t worthwhile. We have a small kitchen, and the cabinets are weird and wouldn’t hold a normal sized dishwasher, so we got an 18" wide portable (on wheels) from Haier. It works well, holds almost as many dishes as a full width unit, and when we redo the kitchen cabinets we’ll make space to install that under the counter. A few years ago it cost about what the countertop model you are looking at does, but I imagine prices have risen since then.
We had one of these in our tiny apartment.
The problem with them is that they really only hold plates, glasses and cutlery. If you have pots or anything large, it just won’t fit. It takes just as long as a normal dishwasher to run. This didn’t work for my husband and me. If you were feeding more than two people, you would have to run it twice. In fact, if you factor in lunch dishes, we were running it twice a day.
On the other hand, we passed it along to my husband’s sister who is enjoying it immensly. They run it a lot and put pretty much everything in it. They eat out a lot more than we tend to, though so that may be a factor.
We had the cheap plastic version for years in our apartment and absolutely loved it. It worked well and just saved a bit of time. We put it where the dish drying rack would go and actually used it as such for pots, etc. We passed it on to a friend who passed it on, etc. So it doesn’t lose much value over time.
We could put small pots in it (which is what we generally used for 2-3 people) and actually had a hard time with cutting boards and tall plates (ones with big rims- we were young and naive with that wedding registry). We also had a half-width under counter one that we loved too.
Make sure that the height will fit under your upper cabinets- they are built to be as close as possible such that non-standard heights or replaced countertops can make the space too short.
I had a countertop dishwasher and loved it because my apartment back then didn’t have one (I also had a washing machine that hooked up to the sink too). It was perfect for 1-2 people I thought. Mostly because I hated doing dishes so much that anything was preferable. But it did do a good job.
Thank you all. Your comments about size and noise made me think the solution would be to establish the thing in the laundry room. It is further from the living areas but still near the kitchen. But in truth it was a mostly idle question.
All the more reason to invest in a portable. You can fill it in the kitchen, run it in the laundry room, then return to the kitchen to unload. Unlke a countertop model, it actually gives you more counter space instead of taking away from it.
You will want to invest in a built in full size dishwasher. It is very irritating to try to fit large objects with lots of small objects into a regular dishwasher. Shrinking it would make it maddening.
I second this. If you have room in the laundry room for a portable, it will be much better.
Something like: