Tell HN: Properly using dishwasher reduced friction with my wife
5 hours ago
We started loading dishes directly into the dishwasher throughout the day. Morning to night. No sink pile.
At night, we run the dishwasher. In the morning, we completely unload it. Empty dishwasher = ready to be used again.
That’s it.
No piles. No guessing whose turn it is. No dishwasher-as-storage. And surprisingly… way fewer fights.
Note before following this system we were washing by hand or bulk load and unload from dishwasher.
I just do everything i can around the house immediately (as long as I dont have to go to work or whatever).. if its a long job it gives me the opportunity to listen to a podcast. “industry is its own reward”.
Here's an idea:
Don't keep score. If you're there and there's dishes, rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. It'll take a few minutes and your partner will be grateful.
If you insist on keeping score, aim for something like 80% of the time.
You don't need to rinse them...it actually works better if you don't rinse them, as it give something for the soap/detergent to stick onto. Try it.
I've heard this claim. I have no idea if it's really true or not. I don't really care.
Here's why I rinse my dishes: it keeps the dishwasher trap cleaner and I get less build up in the dishwasher drain lines, so I have less maintenance to do. The dishes come out clean, anyway.
Edit: It’s true for modern dishwashers. I can’t believe I spent time looking into this. The recommendation is still to scrape food off to prevent the aforementioned issues.
1 reply →
Last fall I stopped trying to optimize loading the dishwasher and waiting to run it until it was full. I call it "dishwasher anarchy".
Now it gets loaded haphazardly throughout the day, run at night, and emptied the next morning.
It really, really offends my sensibilities. Stuff is in the "wrong" place. We are using a lot more detergent. I assume we are using a lot more energy and water.
I haven't had any dishwasher-related fights with my wife and daughter since we started this new protocol. I guess that's a win.
We load haphazardly through the day, though anything that I would predict would be required for the night time meal I would hand wash immediately rather than dump in the dishwasher for the person cooking to have to clean first.
Starting the washer generally falls to me, and wile I will shift items to fit as much in as possible, what I mostly fix are things like: placing a large item where the rotor will hit it, or cutlery with the handles up in the basket which can actually stop the bottom rotor spinning if a forks' prongs point through the bottom.
I’ve always been a straight into the dishwasher person, unless it was already clean and I was too lazy to unload it. Going to the sink first is extra work.
Huh. I would never have thought of "pile up dirty crockery until some later time" as an option!