Dishwasher techniques

So, I just spent a week on vacation with my older brother.

My brother is very accomplished. Cornell PhD.  Highly respected in his field of civil engineering. Has worked on a number of high profile projects, such as the American Embassy in Moscow fiasco and investigating the cause of the 9/11 collapse. He just got an honorary doctorate.

But he has one major, infuriating failing. For the life of me, I can't convince him that the purpose of a dishwasher is to wash dishes. He insists on washing everything clean, by hand, before putting it in the dishwasher. His son suffers from the same delusion, and I get yelled at if I put anything in the dishwasher with a trace of food on it.

I gave him a NY Times article on the subject, and he refused to read it.

I brought it up with a friend of mine, hoping to get sympathy, and found out that she suffers from the same delusion.

Makes me crazy.

One possibility is that their dishwasher actually isn't very effective?  Ours is pretty old, and while i run it because it's good at removing grease, and the water is very hot, i don't trust it with food, certainly not dried food.

I will cop to seriously rinsing the dishes (like washing but without soap?).  Further reasons are that i don't want to have to inspect dishes when i take them out of the d/w, and i don't want to deal with food bits in the filters.  For you, with all respect, the old "when in Rome" thing also applies.  And to the NYT, Consumer Reports, et al., I say to each his own, and furthermore, pooh.

Hope you enjoyed your vacation and your family otherwise.

Whether it ends up in a dishwasher or not, I want “And furthermore, pooh” on a coffee mug.

mjc said:

One possibility is that their dishwasher actually isn't very effective?  Ours is pretty old, and while i run it because it's good at removing grease, and the water is very hot, i don't trust it with food, certainly not dried food.

I will cop to seriously rinsing the dishes (like washing but without soap?).  Further reasons are that i don't want to have to inspect dishes when i take them out of the d/w, and i don't want to deal with food bits in the filters.  For you, with all respect, the old "when in Rome" thing also applies.  And to the NYT, Consumer Reports, et al., I say to each his own, and furthermore, pooh.

Hope you enjoyed your vacation and your family otherwise.

no, he's got high end Bosch dishwashers at both his home and his lake house.

otoh, I've got a low end Frigidaire and it washes everything I throw at it.

"dried food" becomes pretty wet during a dishwasher cycle. and then it washes away. just the way the highly intelligent dishwasher engineers intended it to.

do you think that when dishwashers are tested by their manufacturers, that they fill them with clean dishes?

also, unless you leave huge hunks of food on your plates, the enzymes in the detergent dissolve the food.

vacation was great, except when I was falsely accused by my nephew of not closing the freezer, leaving it open for the whole afternoon when we went golfing. I think it was him.

Unfortunately I had to cut it a bit short because my cpap died and I can't sleep without it.

Also, (1) the prime function of dishwasher:  it conceals used dishes for 2,3,4 days while you're waiting for it to fill up.  Not interested in what would happen to food during that time.  And (2) i still cook (often somewhat grudgingly), not always carefully, so we're not just talking about loose bits on plates.

Possibly overthinking this while enjoying MOL, and letting other more useful stuff languish. 

db, were you able to continue "vacation" after returning home?

And DaveSchmidt, i value your Like. : )

there's no need to wait for it to fill up. they're very efficient. run it every night.

I'm retired now, so there's not much to distinguish vacation time from any other time.

drummerboy said:

there's no need to wait for it to fill up. they're very efficient. run it every night.

I'm retired now, so there's not much to distinguish vacation time from any other time.

That's what Cascade recommends. They say energy star dishwashers use about 4 gal of water, while you use more than that just rinsing them. I still haven't gotten around to that...

"they're very efficient. run it every night"

Ours is probably something like 20 years old.  Not new when we moved in 15 years ago.

drummerboy said:

So, I just spent a week on vacation with my older brother.

My brother is very accomplished. Cornell PhD.  Highly respected in his field of civil engineering. Has worked on a number of high profile projects, such as the American Embassy in Moscow fiasco and investigating the cause of the 9/11 collapse. He just got an honorary doctorate.

But he has one major, infuriating failing. For the life of me, I can't convince him that the purpose of a dishwasher is to wash dishes. He insists on washing everything clean, by hand, before putting it in the dishwasher. His son suffers from the same delusion, and I get yelled at if I put anything in the dishwasher with a trace of food on it.

I gave him a NY Times article on the subject, and he refused to read it.

I brought it up with a friend of mine, hoping to get sympathy, and found out that she suffers from the same delusion.

Makes me crazy.

Does he have any OCD? Seems redundant to put a washed dish in the dishwasher. 

the18thletter said:

Does he have any OCD? Seems redundant to put a washed dish in the dishwasher. 

No OCD. He just fails to understand the purpose of a dishwasher.

Stepdaughter has a great dishwasher. It’s a “lab.”

U’d never know the dishes were eaten off’a.

Formerlyjerseyjack said:

Stepdaughter has a great dishwasher. It’s a “lab.”

U’d never know the dishes were eaten off’a.

Clean as Three Rivers can get it.

I quick rinse any large food particles off and let the dishwasher and detergent do the rest. Sometimes I'll get a glass with some food particles in it, blasted up from below, but generally it works out. I'm typically washing dishes that aren't dishwasher safe or don't fit in there at the same time, so the rinsing is just habitual, really. And I run it when it's full - usually every 1.5 days.

I do a quick rinse so there is no solid food on the dishes and silverware.

This is an interesting article:
https://www.geiler.com/blog/your-dishwasher-is-not-a-garbage-disposal

"Even though there are tools in place to keep food from clogging the dishwasher, this does not mean that you should treat this appliance like it’s a garbage disposal. Its purpose is not to get rid of your food waste. Its purpose is to clean your dishes. If you want your dishwasher to carry out its purpose effectively, you need to save your food waste for the garbage disposal.

This is not to say that a stray piece of crust leftover from lunch’s peanut butter and jelly could be the end of your dishwasher. If scraps are too big to be pulverized, they end up in the filter. The key is to clean out this filter every three to six months to prevent clogging and keep your dishwasher working well. If you treat your dishwasher like a garbage disposal, you’ll need to empty out the filter much more frequently."

yahooyahoo said:

I do a quick rinse so there is no solid food on the dishes and silverware.

This is an interesting article:
https://www.geiler.com/blog/your-dishwasher-is-not-a-garbage-disposal

"Even though there are tools in place to keep food from clogging the dishwasher, this does not mean that you should treat this appliance like it’s a garbage disposal. Its purpose is not to get rid of your food waste. Its purpose is to clean your dishes. If you want your dishwasher to carry out its purpose effectively, you need to save your food waste for the garbage disposal.

This is not to say that a stray piece of crust leftover from lunch’s peanut butter and jelly could be the end of your dishwasher. If scraps are too big to be pulverized, they end up in the filter. The key is to clean out this filter every three to six months to prevent clogging and keep your dishwasher working well. If you treat your dishwasher like a garbage disposal, you’ll need to empty out the filter much more frequently."

Yeah, I agree with all of that, though to be honest, my dw is a couple of years old and I have never cleaned the filter. Don't think I ever cleaned the filter of the one I had before, which I had for several years.