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How to properly load a dishwasher (2020)

165 points by imartin2k 5y ago

geoduck14 5y ago
I really like the picture they used under the headline (https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/756c829022c84b995499d3c076e2c67452a2dbbf/0_121_5760_3456/master/5760.jpg?width=605&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=6d641caeb4be5519d9dec2c3b2a433c6 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/756c829022c84b995499d3c076e2c...) There is something fun about the change in perspective used in pictures like this.
balefrost 5y ago
Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
- teh_klev 5y ago
  Alec is a truly amazing obsessed individual, I love his videos. His recent adventures into how oil fueled lamps is tremendous, no detail left behind.
- uxabhishek 5y ago
  This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.
- jitl 5y ago
  This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!
  - aynyc 5y ago
    Wait, wtf is a pre-wash detergent? And why I have never heard of it?
    - whoisburbansky 5y ago
      It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.
      - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
        Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.
        Scoundreller 5y ago
        I just recommend being a spilly pourer of detergent. Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.
        delecti 5y ago
        He actually mentions that in the video as well.
    - Forge36 5y ago
      It's normal detergent, placed in a space where the pre-wash water cycle can use it.
      - aynyc 5y ago
        Regular Dawn detergent or "dishwasher" detergent?
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).
  - iainmerrick 5y ago
    This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. (Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
    - baq 5y ago
      Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.
    - bonestamp2 5y ago
      > Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it. It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
      - spookthesunset 5y ago
        > Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?
- fbrchps 5y ago
  One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why. Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia. Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 > Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.
- romanhn 5y ago
  Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far). UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!
  - sparker72678 5y ago
    My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either. But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
  - DeRock 5y ago
    Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.
    - morsch 5y ago
      It's strictly equivalent, dishwashers with a separate receptacle just dump it in the compartment, too.
  - leviathant 5y ago
    >So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight. My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant). I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Should be straightforward to figure out which kind your unit is (look and see if it is sealed off or not).
  - loser777 5y ago
    Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I'm in the US using a GE dishwasher. It is similar to the ones in UK - no pre-wash compartment.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.
  - beenBoutIT 5y ago
    Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.
    - Groxx 5y ago
      Sure, if you buy the ones that cost 10x more per load. The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.
- IronWolve 5y ago
  I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great. Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon. TIL, use the pre-fill
  - beenBoutIT 5y ago
    With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.
- dmhmr 5y ago
  I knew what this video was before I clicked. I love his content that gets into this type of focus. His Coleman Lantern videos were great too.
  - pavel_lishin 5y ago
    Ah, another Dietz nut!
- joegahona 5y ago
  I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.
  - wpearse 5y ago
    Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.) We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
    - InvertedRhodium 5y ago
      While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.
  - mynegation 5y ago
    That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.
  - yencabulator 5y ago
    It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sideshowb 5y ago
Related: the 'extreme dishwasher loading' facebook group I learned there you can run your fridge shelves through to get them nice and clean. Also, engine parts :)
- culopatin 5y ago
  I don’t know if I want my dishwasher coated with automotive chemicals. But I’ve thought about having a second one in the garage for parts cleaning before sand blasting
duxup 5y ago
My wife sweats how things get loaded in the dishwasher. My opinion is that provided stuff comes out clean, the proper way to load the dishwasher is up to the person who took the time to do it for everyone in the house. Is it done? Then it was done properly.
- paulirish 5y ago
  You two should go to couples therapy. No joke. The alternative: you let this disagreement remain and be a daily mini-stressor for the rest of your lives.
  - emadabdulrahim 5y ago
    Hmmm. That escalated quickly. Or it could be the thing they joke and laugh about how different they're from each other. Taking extreme absurd examples at each other. Maybe even recording a TikTok video.
  - akjssdk 5y ago
    Why is it that people are always so quick to suggest (couples) therapy? Is it so unlikely that two adults can work something out between themselves, especially if they are in a marriage? Being married is essentially figuring out these mini conflicts, so you better be good at it. That's not to say that counseling cannot help, but it always seems like such an overreaction. Also: please don't take relationship advice from random strangers :)
    - paulirish 5y ago
      Totally agree that conflict resolution is a key component of marriage. I suggest couples therapy as it provided me (and others) with a larger toolbox to address conflicts in general. Of course, if a couple can satisfactorily figure things out themselves, then no need! But that's not the picture that OP painted.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Because very often: 1. It's not about the disagreement. It's about what's behind the disagreement. 2. Many people cannot or will not discuss matters amongst themselves. Getting an impartial third-party engaged (and one who doesn't have a stake in future relationship(s) with the disputants) can have a hugely useful "unsticking" function. Mind, there are many therapists and therapy methods, not all work, and some practitioners are incredibly ineffective.
Gravityloss 5y ago
Here, hot tap water is heated by district heating, while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it. District heating is waste heat from coal plants that produce electricity - so, depends on how you count, it can be considered free from CO2 perspective. Or then as purely made by coal, so actually really bad. Depends. If you use electricity and the coal plant is 30% efficient, that means each kWh of electricity produced 2 kWh of waste heat. So the calculation might not be so simple energy wise.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
  If your pipes are not insulated, the dishwasher might get only room temperature water anyway. Also, district heating - it depends. In the winter, they run this district heating not only for electricity, but ramp it up for more heat production, in the winter.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Even in a typical domestic setting where hot water is heated (at something like 90%+ efficiency) by natural gas, it's still probably better than using grid electricity.
  - baq 5y ago
    The problem is that it might not take hot water at all unless you have a water circulation pump installed and running (not sure how that thing is called in the states).
- zeroonetwothree 5y ago
  I have solar panels though and don’t use all the energy they produce. So running the dishwasher during the day is free.
- adrianmonk 5y ago
  > while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it That's surprising. Here in the US, my dishwasher is connected to the hot water line. Maybe it does vary from one region to another, but I can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line. Typically, dishwashers are near the sink (so it's easy to load), so hot water should be available in most cases.
nemo44x 5y ago
What is with that guy in the article desperately trying to advocate for hand washing dishes? He really tries to rationalize the joy of hand washing to the point I feel really happy for him. He found joy in a mundane, mildly awful task but it also feels darker for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint. Like an OCD thing?
- Veen 5y ago
  I don't know, I quite enjoy washing dishes by hand. As someone who spends most of the day typing in front of a screen, it's nice to do a fairly mindless manual task and let my thoughts wander.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    If you wait to fill the dishwasher with its routine contents before running it, this is supposed to save the most detergent & water. Now if you have at least two of every item that could be likely to be "in the dishwasher" at any one time, it would be ideal to also have maybe another whole dishwaher's load of cabinets & storage space to put it in. That way you will actually have enough extra space to store basically two full loads of duplicate kitchenware when the dishwasher itself is truly empty. You've got to have all these duplicate items and handy space and it barely cuts the odds in half that the item you want is going to still be in the dishwasher anyway. At least that's how it works in the chemistry laboratory. And if it needs to be analytically clean it's possible to make the data more meaningful by hand-washing the high-stakes items.
- yxwvut 5y ago
  I think the thinly-vailed condescension over people who use a dishwasher is what rubs me the wrong way, as though using a more energy and time-efficient method to avoid a monotonous unnecessary task is a vice, or that hand-washing dishes is somehow promoting social harmony (in a way that isn't substitutable with a less pointless activity).
nixpulvis 5y ago
I moved the utensil bins from the front to the right side of our dishwasher (it fits nicely in our new machine), but sadly my roommate didn't like it there :(
sly010 5y ago
Fun fact: you can sous-vide in a dishwasher.
- post_break 5y ago
  You can sous vide with the engine of your car too.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Even without engine, it's possible on window closed car in summer.
leokennis 5y ago
To be honest, I find it hard to believe the "it saves water" argument. How do you need 100 liters of water to hand wash 144 items? I can wash up an exquisite dinner for six in two tubs of water, that is maybe ten liters tops? (Just make sure to start with the cleaner stuff so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food.) A normal small family dinner is easily washed up in 5 liters of water and one squirt of liquid... In a similar vain you need to use a cotton tote bag thousands of times to beat the environmental impact of plastic bags (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climat...) and the same goes for your reusable coffee cup (https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/07/reusable-or-disposable-which-coffee-cup-has-a-smaller-footprint/ https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/07/reusable-or-dis...).
- stevewodil 5y ago
  >so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food This indicates to me that you are using a literal tub of water to wash the items in, using the same water for all dishes. Kinda gross but besides the point. Most people that hand wash dishes are just letting the faucet run while they wash the dish so that's why it uses so much water, they aren't reusing any water
  - steerablesafe 5y ago
    Well, the dishwasher also reuses water, that's how it saves water.
    - jacobmischka 5y ago
      Yes, but it also filters and traps the chunks in the tray that you're supposed to clean.
      - chewbacha 5y ago
        In addition it operates at a higher temperature and pH than hand washing, which is fairly antimicrobial very just detergent and hand-hot temperature.
joezydeco 5y ago
"The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month" If you have a Bosch, I'd recommend doing it every third or fourth cycle. There's no food grinder/impeller in these machines and the fine filter gathers material way faster than what you're probably used to. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2b9QeiYRo&t=80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2b9QeiYRo&t=80s The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me. Unless there are actual solids (=bones, remains of stickers on glasses that contain plastics) in there, the combination of heat and extreme alkality of the washing water will dissolve just about anything over time so that it passes through the filter and gets pumped out.
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    The common service call for Bosch dishwashers is "will not drain", and the common fix is to pull out the completely clogged filter and clean it as seen in the video above. The evidence doesn't support the idea that the material eventually dissolves out of the filter. Secondly, the final rinse water is filled into the tub and recirculated over the same filter. It's not directly sprayed from the water supply over the dishes and into the drain.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    The difference between theory and practice in Bosch machines is very large. They don't really work that way, in my experience. Instead, the whole filter complex ends up with a huge gooey mess that clogs the whole filter.
    - jfk13 5y ago
      As a (satisfied) Bosch dishwasher owner, I don't recognise this description. Offhand I can't even remember when I last cleaned the filter. Meanwhile, it just keeps working.
test001only 5y ago
I use stainless steel for a lot of my cooking and grew up in a household without dishwasher. When I got my hand on a dishwasher as an adult and tried out washing the stainless steel utensils in it, I saw that the steel utensils had a coloured pattern left in it - it is similar to the pattern seen when petrol mixes with rain water on the roads. I am not sure if that is safe. Anybody know why this occurs?
- refurb 5y ago
  It’s a very fine layer of surface oxidation. Same reason you can get different colors on aluminum depending on how thick the oxide layer is. Stainless steel is corrosion resistant, not corrosion proof. Dishwashers are actually pretty harsh with high temperatures and high pH detergents. You can get the same effect by putting a stainless steel spoon in a pot of boiling water.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    On top of that some detergents will leave a bit behind (for various reasons). All of the washers I had, have an extra 'jet dry' compartment. It adds a drop in for the last rinse cycle. Seems to bind to the stuff and clear it up by letting it wash away. So if you are getting spotty glasses after cleaning look into that.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I hand wash our stainless pots and get (what I think is) the same. I think it’s a very thin film of something (not likely soap as I can get it without soap). I use white vinegar to dissolve it about once a month (making me think it’s basic, possibly calcium carbonate). Pour in a cup or so of white vinegar and set the pan to heat. When it’s hot but before it boils, swish it around and then pour it into the next pan. Rinse the first pan in plain water while the vinegar sits in the second. When the first pan is rinsed, pour the vinegar into the third, etc. Our stainless pans never see the inside of the dishwasher and still get this.
  - exmadscientist 5y ago
raldi 5y ago
They didn't mention the most important tip: Most dishwashers draw from the hot water tap and then use the first ~gallon that comes out for the crucial first scrub, regardless of what temperature comes out the pipe. Thus, you'll get much better results if, right before pressing Start, you run the kitchen sink's hot water tap until it gets hot. Second best tip: Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. (The rest gets released in the secondary wash cycle.)
- CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
  I don't know about the UK but here in Europe dishwashers don't use the hot tap.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Older ones did, same for washing machines. I guess it stuck in the US for whatever reason.
  - duncans 5y ago
    Same in the UK. Most hook up to the cold water supply only.
- RandallBrown 5y ago
  >Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. Many (most?) dishwashers have a special section for putting soap that gets used in the pre-rinse cycle. In mine it would be functionally identical to spilling some extra detergent, but it's easier to consistently measure the right amount.
  - raldi 5y ago
    True; we use a measuring spoon anyway to scoop 1 tsp into the box and 1/2 tsp to spill. (Turns out you don't need anywhere near what the box size suggests, and that can actually cause the drain to get gunked up with foam.)
  - 5y ago
1970-01-01 5y ago
The Guardian left out what I consider the most likely 'failure mode' for someone that thinks dishwashers are a magical cleaning box. Make sure the spinning wash arms are not blocked AND everything is secure, so knives, forks, lids, etc. can not fall and block the wash arm's spin. Lots of cycles seem to fail around here when someone can't seem to remember how gravity still affects things in the dishwasher..
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  Yes. It took me a year to figure out why my Bosch sporadically left loads of dishes dirty. It turned out that some of our smaller square dishes are able to poke down through the rack far enough to stop the lower wash arm.
post_break 5y ago
Lemi shine is the game changer for us. A tiny bit into the machine and everything comes out way better. Unfortunately everyone is switching to pods which do a bad job in the dish washers I've used. Seems like only the dollar stores sell the dishwasher powder these days. Lemi shine and lemi shine boost, not paid by them but give it a try if your machine always does a bad job, a little goes a long way too. I originally found it by washing brass (I reload ammo).
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  >Seems like only the dollar stores sell the dishwasher powder these days. Target and Trader Joes each have powdered. No need to stoop to dollar store levels ;)
  - post_break 5y ago
    Don't knock dollar stores. I get a lot of stuff there because I don't need a large amount before it goes bad or stuff that is good enough or discounted.
deleted 5y ago
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sokoloff 5y ago
My tip: use the soap dispenser to tell you if the dishwasher is clean or not. After unloading, put a new tablet in and close the dispenser. Voila, closed dispenser == dirty dishes (or your dishwasher is broken :) )
- capableweb 5y ago
  I might be slightly old/senile/dumb but what problem does this solve? If the dishwasher contains dirty dishes, it's dirty and if not, it's not. Why would you need another signal to tell if it's dirty or not? Or I grandly miss the point here, sorry if so.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    It is not always obvious whether the dishes are dirty, especially if you are in a household that does some amount of rinsing of dishes (or if you had a meal that didn't have a lot of color to it).
  - mikestew 5y ago
    Does it contain dirty dishes, or did the spouse run the dishwasher while you weren't paying attention? Now you're stacking dirty dishes in with the clean (sure, the dishwasher was full, but you found a spot). Or your one sample dish was rinsed, and looks clean, so you start stacking dirty dishes in the cupboard... At our house, it's easier to just use a little magnet with clean/dirty on it to track dishwasher state. Or one can use the soap door suggestion above.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      It might be that my household eat food on plates very differently, but it's obvious if it's dirty or clean dishes in the dishwasher, as long as you open the door and look in. But I guess as the other comment mentioned, if you pre-wash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (not sure why you would, but let's run with it), then I can kind of see how it can be confusing.
exmadscientist 5y ago
The best way to load a dishwasher is to get a Miele. (At least the US models, I can't speak for other countries.) For Reasons, I've dealt with six dishwashers over the last decade. This one actually works. Anything that goes in and isn't ludicrously dirty or positioned just gets clean. It's wonderful not caring about top rack vs bottom rack or prewash or starting the hot water early or.... It just gets dishes clean.
- koolba 5y ago
  Miele and Maytag are the only brands I’ve seen that both consistently work and last for many many years. Ditto for Maytag laundry machines. Those things are tanks.
  - exmadscientist 5y ago
    Having had the (unfortunate) opportunity to personally compare the Miele to the top-of-the-line-in-2014 Maytag back-to-back, the Miele is a different animal. Maytag does not build them like they used to.
    - serf 5y ago
      >Maytag does not build them like they used to. that has been my experience across their entire lineup since the early 2000s. some of their industrial style earlier stuff is fantastic, it's a shame they couldn't keep up with those standards.
    - bserge 5y ago
      Maytag is Whirlpoop now iirc
  - missblit 5y ago
    My Maytag dryer is around 37 years old (older than I am!) and works great. So when I read articles claiming dryers have a life of around a decade I can't help but laugh.
- gmac 5y ago
eschneider 5y ago
Pro-tip: While it's fun and awesome to optimize these little household tasks for maximum efficiency, it's not cool to criticize how your SO/housemates/whomever does it. This is not the hill to kill your relationships on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vanderZwan 5y ago
> Despite all the caveats, dishwashers are not only the convenient answer to our modernist woes, they’re actually more energy- and water-efficient than hand washing. A full dishwasher can clean 144 items with roughly 13 litres of water, or anything between eight and 20. According to a study by the University of Bonn, hand washing the same load uses, on average, 100 litres of water. I genuinely wonder how people get up to 100 litres of water, or if my intuition regarding nr. of items vs water volume is just that far off. Are we sure this isn't measured by comparing to people using a constantly running tap for this instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Because I was pretty shocked to discover that most of my friends use a constantly running tap while washing the dishes.
- anthony_romeo 5y ago
  More often than not [at least where I happen to live in the US] I actually see kitchen sinks with only one basin (and often too small). One basin isn't really enough to efficiently clean dishes without it being a big hassle. I suspect that this is a multifaceted consequence of dishwashers becoming so commonplace, people cooking less and less, and constant attempts by owners to cut minor costs at the expense of tenants' standard of living.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  > instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Most people I know have one sink. Two sinks were found in rich peoples homes. Personally I really want one of those big commercial sink faucets that's a flexible shower head suspended by a spring BUT turned on by a momentary foot pedal instead of a squeeze valve on the head. The you have both hands free to rinse and scrub while your foot operates the faucet.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    we actually have two sinks, but one sink is misused as as a drying rack because there is no other space. not having hands free to turn water on and off is also an issue i ran into resulting in letting water running more often than necessary.
  - 5y ago
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
Despite all the advice, I’ve been washing knives in the dishwasher for a decade and they are still totally fine. They certainly don’t “rust”. What kind of metal are these people making knives out of?
- toast0 5y ago
  Depends on your detergent too, the lemon scented stuff seems to induce way more rust than the unscented.
- anderiv 5y ago
  The alloy of high-carbon steel that is used in many high-end knives will absolutely rust if washed in the dishwasher. Stainless steel knives generally won't rust, of course.
- exmadscientist 5y ago
  Dishwashers tend to destroy the handles and edges of knives. If your knives survive... what kind are they, so I can buy some?
  - raldi 5y ago
    I've got a cheap chef's knife from the restaurant-supply store — I think it was $30 — and have been dishwashing it exclusively since 2009, and it's totally fine. https://i.imgur.com/tL699FA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tL699FA.jpg
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008M5U1C2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008M5U1C2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... These are highly recommended for a being cheap yet good chef's knife. Mine has survived 5 years of daily dishwasher cleaning...
    - DiabloD3 5y ago
      I also use Victorinox Fibrox Pro series knives. They're inexpensive, partially forged, easy to sharpen, and stay sharp surprisingly long as long as you take care of them. I do not dishwasher mine, however, and I do not soak them.
lukateake 5y ago
PRO-TIP: when unloading the dishwasher start from the bottom and work your way up. Doing so prevents an accidental, upside-down cup or bowl from spilling water on your clean dishes beneath.
mr337 5y ago
So one thing that really surprised me is the little pocket on the soap tray. I started adding some liquid soap there as part of the loading and saw a big improvement on cleaning result. The idea is during the first pre cleaning cycle the soap will start working so you add the detergent on dish time. https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04
xyzzy21 5y ago
Pre-rinse is useful, and particularly for older dish washers, while the pre-rinse mode on dish washers themselves is EXTREMELY useful - probably necessary to be actually water and energy efficient while still cleaning. Pre-rinse is generally ALWAYS done anyway but using detergent during it is a good idea. Pre-rinse mode in the dishwasher involves a first water and soap wash before the water recycling main wash occurs. Most grease can be removed with the pre-rinse cycle when detergent is used. This prevents having grease "re-applied" to the dishes during the main cycle and its repeated water recycles upon the dishes. Pre-rinse can always be done with or without detergent - some dishwashers do not have a dedicated holder for the detergent but only an indented space next to the normal cycle detergent holder. Use this for a detergent pre-rinse. Pre-rinsing in the sink before loading is still often necessary - no dishwasher is as effective at cleaning as hand washing. And especially when a dishwasher gets old, that already lesser effectiveness gets worse. Honestly this article sounds like a dishwasher PR story planted in the normal news. This IS HOW MOST NEWS SOURCES OPERATOR now: a PR firm/group at a corporation will write a bunch of pro-Firm/pro-Product articles FOR use by magazines, newspapers, syndication, etc. This started to happen in the 1990s and now is pretty much all stories because 1) news organizations no longer have reporters at all or have no reporters "in the field" at all, and 2) the pay isn't good enough to do "real journalism" any more. I worked for a Fortune 25 company that was on the vanguard of this kind of PR-to-News system. It worked really well because editors are LAZY as are far too many journalists!
m3kw9 5y ago
I think time is the ultimate measurement when using dishwasher. The trick is to know if you can load the dish washer faster than you clean it by hand. You start measuring at the point you stand in-front of the sink and end when you press the start button.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  I'd count the unloading phase as well. With hand-washed dishes, there should be no ambiguity over whether or not the dishes are clean or not (if they're in the drying rack, they're clean). With the dishwasher, not only can I not immediately tell, but often what's been washed is not in fact clean.
  - m3kw9 5y ago
    I would think unloading from a dish washer is faster than from the drying rack as it is more organized so easier to grab similar dishes. The drying rack gets chaotic once you get large amounts. As for dishes not cleaned, that is true, you’d need to count that somehow into a bigger equation.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Maybe I'm just fanatical about how I organise my drying rack ;-) The fact that it's at counter-height helps. I find that chore pretty straightforward.
forgotmypw17 5y ago
Almost all dishwasher detergents have some gnarly chemicals in them you don't want to read the sheets on. And most dishwashers I have inspected leave a bit of soap residue on all the dishes. You can easily see this for yourself by filling a "clean" glass with water and observing the soapy bubbles. If you rinse it thoroughly and try again, they will not be there. Another one of modern life's intelligence tests, if you ask me. I avoid them, and I rinse dishes which come out of one thoroughly before using them.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  What gnarly chemicals?
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    have a look for yourself https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/1604-CascadeDishwasherDetergentGel/ https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/1604-CascadeDishwasherDe... a small portion you eat and drink, most of it ends up harming animals downstream. by buying it, you also support its harmful production process.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      I appreciate people like you who care about the effects of the products we buy on ourselves and the environment. I do too. But while the EWG does some OK work, they also do a lot of fearmongering, and you can plainly see it in this link. Look at the three big scary red "F" items. The first scary red "F" is sodium hypochlorite. This is ordinary bleach. EWG cites two reasons for the big scary "F". The first is aquatic toxicity. This is a badly misplaced fear. Consider the fact that chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in municipal water systems, in the form of hypochlorite and chloramine. Chlorine is dumped by the ton into the water that comes out of your taps and goes down your drains. The extra chlorine from dish detergents is insignificant compared to this and other sources such as laundry bleach. Also under the chlorine entry, EWG lists a few organic chlorine compounds. This is very misleading. Detergents don't contain any of these chemicals. Rather, they can possibly be generated when free chlorine is added to water containing a lot of organics. Many organohalogens are indeed toxic, but by far most of them that you'll encounter are generated by municipal water treatment systems. You drink and bathe in water that contains random organohalogens every day, by virtue of the chlorine used in municipal treatment. The small extra quantities generated in your dishwasher aren't a threat to you unless you make it a habit to drink the exhaust water. The second scary red "F" on their list is zinc carbonate. This is absurd. They say it's primarily because of its potential effects on aquatic life, which I suppose might be a consideration if someone tries to use dishwasher detergent to clean a fish tank. The second reason is "general systemic/organ effects". This is the really absurd part. Zinc is an essential mineral in the human diet in large quantities. In very high doses over time, excess zinc can cause problems, but such large doses have nothing to do with dishwasher detergent residues. You'd have to actually eat large quantities of detergent daily for a long period of time, and even that would be unlikely to cause zinc overdose because the carbonate form has low bioavailability. The third scary red "F" is "colors". They don't say what the colors are, or why they would be more of a concern than in any other cosmetic or cleaning product. The fourth scary red "F" is "stabilizer". They don't say what the chemical is, so there's no way to know whether it's any less bullshit than the first three, or even if it exists in the product. The scary orange "D" items continue the absurdity: - Nitric acid: I think EWG is confused here. Nitric acid would be used only in minute quantities to adjust pH. Dishwasher detergents are very alkaline, so it's not possible for nitric acid to remain in a liquid product. - Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you. - Polyacrylates: you know where else you'll find polyacrylates? Fucking everywhere. Nearly every liquid cosmetic product you'll find uses polyacrylates. Shampoos, hand soap, dish soap, etc. All baby diapers are now filled with polyacrylates. They're added to potting soil to increase moisture retention. Don't eat too much of the solid form because it can expand in your stomach and cause bloating and possibly blockage, but tiny amounts of them are not the least bit threatening in your dishwasher. In summary, don't blindly trust the EWG. None of these ingredients is the least bit dangerous even if they remained in significant quantities on your dishes, which they don't.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
Just a note for people who do NOT have sewage service(ie you have a septic tank). You should be rinsing ALL your dishes before using the dishwasher, capturing the solids in a strainer, and putting them in your trash. Solid food that magically is cleaned by your dishwasher goes into your septic system and significantly reduces time-to-failure, or at the least time-till-you-have-it-pumped-to-avoid-failure.
- nathancahill 5y ago
  My friends load up their dishwasher without rinsing, then call their pup over to clean off the food. Does an excellent job too.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    My friends load up their dishwasher without rinsing, then call their pup over to clean off the food They must have a small dog, if it fits inside a dishwasher.
- jefftk 5y ago
  Is the thin layer on plates significant, relative to the human waste solids already going into your septic system?
  - clipradiowallet 5y ago
    Without going into the icky details too much... yes it is relevant. Even something like grated carrots will sit in your septic tank for years without decaying. This is largely due to the temperature - it's far too cold to get the easy rotting and composting effect you would see if you left it outside in the sun. The solids you are mentioning are already digested, and are much easier for the bacteria in your septic tank to break down and reach a soluble/flowing state that can pass into your drainage field. Another good example that is REALLY common to see clogging the septic tank exit is coffee grounds - which would compost very quickly in the sunshine, but will last forever in your septic tank and contribute to a very thick "sludge" layer on the bottom. That layer never goes anywhere, and as it grows the capacity of your septic tank shrinks. This will go on until the sludge reaches the exit level and causes the septic system to fail, or until you have it pumped.
spindo 5y ago
Off-topic. I moved into a place 10 years ago, and haven’t used the dishwasher even once. I now want to use it. Any tips on how to prepare it given that lots of “stuff” is probably backed up in its plumbing?
- jms703 5y ago
  Run an empty load and add a cup of white vinegar.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  Clean out the filter(s) and consider running a clean cycle. I bought a heavily used portable unit a few years ago and lemi-shine did a great job. I've had good results with affresh in other appliances. I really don't think brand matters too much, the cleaning solution is pretty basic. Usually they drain into the garbage disposal if preinstalled, so if your sink works the dishwasher is probably fine.
- tmountain 5y ago
  Often time they share an outflow with the kitchen sink, so the plumbing may not be as backed up as you imagine provided that you use the sink regularly. That said, proceed with caution.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
comeonseriously 5y ago
> “The dishwasher is this wonderful thing but it did, in truth, produce a kind of idiot-worker in the kitchen because it took away the intuition of doing the dishes,” he tells Guardian Australia from his home in Seattle. “I want to get my hands on the thing, [like] cooking is getting your hands on what you’re doing.” Don't let the dishwasher dry the dishes. Take them out and dry them yourself and you can make sure they're all clean.
- zaat 5y ago
  > The hand washing enthusiast says the best way to know if something’s clean is to take your time to look at it and feel it. You’ll know immediately if something’s dirty when you run your fingers along the surface. Sure, regardless of the dish's state before, after you run your fingers on it it isn't clean anymore.
  - missblit 5y ago
    Touching a clean dish with a clean finger won't make it unsanitary or gross.
  - comeonseriously 5y ago
    Kitchen gloves.
eecc 5y ago
I need to get the food encrusting off the cutlery or I’ll get scorched remains of them when the washing is over. But perhaps I’ll stop wiping the plates and leave more of that grime for the sensors
codezero 5y ago
> The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month. Uhhh, I am not the only person who doesn't clean that, or didn't know there was one? Luckily a do a bit of pre-wash so there shouldn't really be food debris to capture, but now I'm dreading checking the thing after ten years lol. I wonder if my apartment's maintenance people check it when they change my air filters and carbon monoxide detectors and I didn't notice. I'm dreading finding out.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Not all dishwashers have a food filter. Many will simply grind up the food stuffs much like a garbage disposal does.
  - codezero 5y ago
    Time to check mine, I suspect it has such a feature since it hasn’t broken in ten years without removing debris :)
throwaway20371 5y ago
Is literally nobody gonna talk about regularly descaling the washer for hard water??? Do you want calcium build-up on your dishes and a half broken machine?
blunte 5y ago
They say to put the dirtier things at the bottom since that's where the strong jets of water come from. Then they say to put cutlery face down so it gets cleaner. What about the other side of the cutlery? Was only one side dirty? And then, the no-prewash directive... If you put dishes with stuck-on food into the dishwasher, there's some chance that the stuck-on food will not come off. Then that food gets baked on during the drying cycle. It may be sanitary, but it's is not something I want. Until someone can draw the line between "some bacteria is good for you and makes you stronger" and "oh this will cause you grief or death", I still err on the side over serious pre-cleaning and then hot dishwashing.
- choward 5y ago
  I only run my dishwasher once or twice a week. I don't want food stuck to my dishes for that long. I always rinse/prewash.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  > What about the other side of the cutlery? Was only one side dirty? I read this as the handle should be at the top and the points ("face"?) should be at the bottom (assuming vertical cutlery bins). I know some people who swear the handles should be on the bottom and the points should be on top.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  I pre-clean too. But, the thing that really kills the bacteria is not the hot water (it's not hot enough), it's the bleach in the dishwasher detergent (bleach is a chemical sterilizer).
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Also the alkalinity of the detergent. Much as with soap, that disrupts lipid membranes in bacteria and viruses. The "20 second" rule for handwashing is mostly about how long germs need to be in contact with soap before they're mostly dead. (Mostly dead isn't all dead </MiracleMax>) You may still have dirt/soil on your hands after 20s, but it's pretty much sterilised.
peanut_worm 5y ago
Has anyone tried one of those tiny countertop dishwashers? I just got one and I think its neat. I guess thats how I can tell I am getting older.
- qiqitori 5y ago
  I got one about 2.5 months ago. (Called "Novete" in the US, AINX in Japan -- names in other countries may vary.) It works pretty well, but there's no pre-wash cycle. "Finish" tabs sometimes left behind a thin oil film on all dishes when the dishwasher was at full capacity. I obtained a reportedly better detergent now (only available locally), not tabs but powder, and am using more, or less, depending on how full the dishwasher is, and haven't had any problems since. The tray is showing some discoloration -- maybe using too much detergent? There is some very minor leakage when the door is open -- the rubber has become slightly loose at the edge. Pushing it in a bit after opening the door effectively fixes the problem. Doesn't look like it could turn into a problem while actually in use. I really like that I don't have to bend over in order to load/unload it. Inspecting it to search for potential problems is very easy too -- maybe I wouldn't have been able to decide whether the minor leakage I mentioned above was a major problem or something that can be mostly ignored. I also really like that the door is see-through. You can easily tell what objects is causing noises or if the rotors are rotating properly. I use it every day, so probably 100 times already at this point. I wish it was more programmable, but it's very set in its ways. I fill up the tank manually, and the drain hose leads into a bucket. Also wish it was a bit quieter.
mdavis6890 5y ago
I am totally fine if some of my dishes need to be re-washed by hand, as long as I have to spend zero additional minutes thinking about pre-washing or how to load my dishwasher.
- spiffytech 5y ago
  I'm the opposite: I'm happy to do some up-front prep / thinking if it means I don't have to second-guess whether the dishwasher did its job. Prep feels like helping it do its job, re-washing feels like doing its job for it.
scrubs 5y ago
Sent this to the wife who has a touch of ocd and is quite clear and explicit about prewash cleanup and what goes where in the dishwasher. She replied that she thought she'd better not read it cause it might make a point. I don't care much either way ... but now there will be an extra smile around the kitchen as this rattles around her brain
smetj 5y ago
Just buy the most common day-to-day things 3-fold. Regular drinking glasses, cutlery, plates, cups. This way you can keep taking clean ones whilst filling up the dishwasher with dirty ones. This way the dishwasher doesn't need to run half-full if you ran out of stuff. Pots and pans are big and quick to clean by hand.
Groxx 5y ago
.... it depends a lot on the dishwasher. Though yes, detergent is nasty stuff and the damage accumulates, even if you find a relatively gentle one. But for example, no, my relatively-recently-built dishwasher does not have a turbidity sensor; cycles run on a timer, nothing more. I'm in an apartment. A significant portion of the US population is as well. The built-in dishwasher here is just shy of being garbage (I've had far worse, this one is acceptable). A lot of those intelligent design things do not exist in it, because it was made for bottom-dollar bulk sales. Using the pre-rinsing cycle has had an absolutely massively improved cleaning quality for us, and pre-wash soap has done absolutely nothing unless dishes have massive amounts of crud on them (and even then, the pre-rinse does dramatically more).

165 points by imartin2k 5y ago

I really like the picture they used under the headline (https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/756c829022c84b995499d3c076e2c67452a2dbbf/0_121_5760_3456/master/5760.jpg?width=605&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=6d641caeb4be5519d9dec2c3b2a433c6 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/756c829022c84b995499d3c076e2c...) There is something fun about the change in perspective used in pictures like this.

balefrost 5y ago

Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

teh_klev 5y ago
Alec is a truly amazing obsessed individual, I love his videos. His recent adventures into how oil fueled lamps is tremendous, no detail left behind.
uxabhishek 5y ago
This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.
jitl 5y ago
This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!
- aynyc 5y ago
  Wait, wtf is a pre-wash detergent? And why I have never heard of it?
  - whoisburbansky 5y ago
    It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        I just recommend being a spilly pourer of detergent. Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.
      - delecti 5y ago
        He actually mentions that in the video as well.
  - Forge36 5y ago
    It's normal detergent, placed in a space where the pre-wash water cycle can use it.
    - aynyc 5y ago
      Regular Dawn detergent or "dishwasher" detergent?
stronglikedan 5y ago
Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. (Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
  - baq 5y ago
    Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.
  - bonestamp2 5y ago
    > Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it. It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?
fbrchps 5y ago
One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why. Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia. Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 > Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.
romanhn 5y ago
Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far). UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!
- sparker72678 5y ago
  My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either. But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
- DeRock 5y ago
  Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.
  - morsch 5y ago
    It's strictly equivalent, dishwashers with a separate receptacle just dump it in the compartment, too.
- leviathant 5y ago
  >So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight. My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.
quietbritishjim 5y ago
Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant). I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Should be straightforward to figure out which kind your unit is (look and see if it is sealed off or not).
- loser777 5y ago
  Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I'm in the US using a GE dishwasher. It is similar to the ones in UK - no pre-wash compartment.
jrootabega 5y ago
I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.
- beenBoutIT 5y ago
  Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.
  - Groxx 5y ago
    Sure, if you buy the ones that cost 10x more per load. The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.
IronWolve 5y ago
I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great. Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon. TIL, use the pre-fill
- beenBoutIT 5y ago
  With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.
dmhmr 5y ago
I knew what this video was before I clicked. I love his content that gets into this type of focus. His Coleman Lantern videos were great too.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  Ah, another Dietz nut!
joegahona 5y ago
I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.
- wpearse 5y ago
  Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.) We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
  - InvertedRhodium 5y ago
    While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.
- mynegation 5y ago
  That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

sideshowb 5y ago

Related: the 'extreme dishwasher loading' facebook group I learned there you can run your fridge shelves through to get them nice and clean. Also, engine parts :)

culopatin 5y ago
I don’t know if I want my dishwasher coated with automotive chemicals. But I’ve thought about having a second one in the garage for parts cleaning before sand blasting

duxup 5y ago

My wife sweats how things get loaded in the dishwasher. My opinion is that provided stuff comes out clean, the proper way to load the dishwasher is up to the person who took the time to do it for everyone in the house. Is it done? Then it was done properly.

paulirish 5y ago
You two should go to couples therapy. No joke. The alternative: you let this disagreement remain and be a daily mini-stressor for the rest of your lives.
- emadabdulrahim 5y ago
  Hmmm. That escalated quickly. Or it could be the thing they joke and laugh about how different they're from each other. Taking extreme absurd examples at each other. Maybe even recording a TikTok video.
- akjssdk 5y ago
  Why is it that people are always so quick to suggest (couples) therapy? Is it so unlikely that two adults can work something out between themselves, especially if they are in a marriage? Being married is essentially figuring out these mini conflicts, so you better be good at it. That's not to say that counseling cannot help, but it always seems like such an overreaction. Also: please don't take relationship advice from random strangers :)
  - paulirish 5y ago
    Totally agree that conflict resolution is a key component of marriage. I suggest couples therapy as it provided me (and others) with a larger toolbox to address conflicts in general. Of course, if a couple can satisfactorily figure things out themselves, then no need! But that's not the picture that OP painted.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Because very often: 1. It's not about the disagreement. It's about what's behind the disagreement. 2. Many people cannot or will not discuss matters amongst themselves. Getting an impartial third-party engaged (and one who doesn't have a stake in future relationship(s) with the disputants) can have a hugely useful "unsticking" function. Mind, there are many therapists and therapy methods, not all work, and some practitioners are incredibly ineffective.

Gravityloss 5y ago

Here, hot tap water is heated by district heating, while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it. District heating is waste heat from coal plants that produce electricity - so, depends on how you count, it can be considered free from CO2 perspective. Or then as purely made by coal, so actually really bad. Depends. If you use electricity and the coal plant is 30% efficient, that means each kWh of electricity produced 2 kWh of waste heat. So the calculation might not be so simple energy wise.

BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
If your pipes are not insulated, the dishwasher might get only room temperature water anyway. Also, district heating - it depends. In the winter, they run this district heating not only for electricity, but ramp it up for more heat production, in the winter.
HPsquared 5y ago
Even in a typical domestic setting where hot water is heated (at something like 90%+ efficiency) by natural gas, it's still probably better than using grid electricity.
- baq 5y ago
  The problem is that it might not take hot water at all unless you have a water circulation pump installed and running (not sure how that thing is called in the states).
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
I have solar panels though and don’t use all the energy they produce. So running the dishwasher during the day is free.
adrianmonk 5y ago
> while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it That's surprising. Here in the US, my dishwasher is connected to the hot water line. Maybe it does vary from one region to another, but I can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line. Typically, dishwashers are near the sink (so it's easy to load), so hot water should be available in most cases.

nemo44x 5y ago

What is with that guy in the article desperately trying to advocate for hand washing dishes? He really tries to rationalize the joy of hand washing to the point I feel really happy for him. He found joy in a mundane, mildly awful task but it also feels darker for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint. Like an OCD thing?

Veen 5y ago
I don't know, I quite enjoy washing dishes by hand. As someone who spends most of the day typing in front of a screen, it's nice to do a fairly mindless manual task and let my thoughts wander.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  If you wait to fill the dishwasher with its routine contents before running it, this is supposed to save the most detergent & water. Now if you have at least two of every item that could be likely to be "in the dishwasher" at any one time, it would be ideal to also have maybe another whole dishwaher's load of cabinets & storage space to put it in. That way you will actually have enough extra space to store basically two full loads of duplicate kitchenware when the dishwasher itself is truly empty. You've got to have all these duplicate items and handy space and it barely cuts the odds in half that the item you want is going to still be in the dishwasher anyway. At least that's how it works in the chemistry laboratory. And if it needs to be analytically clean it's possible to make the data more meaningful by hand-washing the high-stakes items.
yxwvut 5y ago
I think the thinly-vailed condescension over people who use a dishwasher is what rubs me the wrong way, as though using a more energy and time-efficient method to avoid a monotonous unnecessary task is a vice, or that hand-washing dishes is somehow promoting social harmony (in a way that isn't substitutable with a less pointless activity).

nixpulvis 5y ago

I moved the utensil bins from the front to the right side of our dishwasher (it fits nicely in our new machine), but sadly my roommate didn't like it there :(

sly010 5y ago

Fun fact: you can sous-vide in a dishwasher.

post_break 5y ago
You can sous vide with the engine of your car too.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Even without engine, it's possible on window closed car in summer.

leokennis 5y ago

To be honest, I find it hard to believe the "it saves water" argument. How do you need 100 liters of water to hand wash 144 items? I can wash up an exquisite dinner for six in two tubs of water, that is maybe ten liters tops? (Just make sure to start with the cleaner stuff so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food.) A normal small family dinner is easily washed up in 5 liters of water and one squirt of liquid... In a similar vain you need to use a cotton tote bag thousands of times to beat the environmental impact of plastic bags (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climat...) and the same goes for your reusable coffee cup (https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/07/reusable-or-disposable-which-coffee-cup-has-a-smaller-footprint/ https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/07/reusable-or-dis...).

stevewodil 5y ago
>so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food This indicates to me that you are using a literal tub of water to wash the items in, using the same water for all dishes. Kinda gross but besides the point. Most people that hand wash dishes are just letting the faucet run while they wash the dish so that's why it uses so much water, they aren't reusing any water
- steerablesafe 5y ago
  Well, the dishwasher also reuses water, that's how it saves water.
  - jacobmischka 5y ago
    Yes, but it also filters and traps the chunks in the tray that you're supposed to clean.
    - chewbacha 5y ago
      In addition it operates at a higher temperature and pH than hand washing, which is fairly antimicrobial very just detergent and hand-hot temperature.

joezydeco 5y ago

"The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month" If you have a Bosch, I'd recommend doing it every third or fourth cycle. There's no food grinder/impeller in these machines and the fine filter gathers material way faster than what you're probably used to. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2b9QeiYRo&t=80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2b9QeiYRo&t=80s The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me.

mschuster91 5y ago
> The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me. Unless there are actual solids (=bones, remains of stickers on glasses that contain plastics) in there, the combination of heat and extreme alkality of the washing water will dissolve just about anything over time so that it passes through the filter and gets pumped out.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  The common service call for Bosch dishwashers is "will not drain", and the common fix is to pull out the completely clogged filter and clean it as seen in the video above. The evidence doesn't support the idea that the material eventually dissolves out of the filter. Secondly, the final rinse water is filled into the tub and recirculated over the same filter. It's not directly sprayed from the water supply over the dishes and into the drain.
- dekhn 5y ago
  The difference between theory and practice in Bosch machines is very large. They don't really work that way, in my experience. Instead, the whole filter complex ends up with a huge gooey mess that clogs the whole filter.
  - jfk13 5y ago
    As a (satisfied) Bosch dishwasher owner, I don't recognise this description. Offhand I can't even remember when I last cleaned the filter. Meanwhile, it just keeps working.

test001only 5y ago

I use stainless steel for a lot of my cooking and grew up in a household without dishwasher. When I got my hand on a dishwasher as an adult and tried out washing the stainless steel utensils in it, I saw that the steel utensils had a coloured pattern left in it - it is similar to the pattern seen when petrol mixes with rain water on the roads. I am not sure if that is safe. Anybody know why this occurs?

refurb 5y ago
It’s a very fine layer of surface oxidation. Same reason you can get different colors on aluminum depending on how thick the oxide layer is. Stainless steel is corrosion resistant, not corrosion proof. Dishwashers are actually pretty harsh with high temperatures and high pH detergents. You can get the same effect by putting a stainless steel spoon in a pot of boiling water.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  On top of that some detergents will leave a bit behind (for various reasons). All of the washers I had, have an extra 'jet dry' compartment. It adds a drop in for the last rinse cycle. Seems to bind to the stuff and clear it up by letting it wash away. So if you are getting spotty glasses after cleaning look into that.
sokoloff 5y ago
I hand wash our stainless pots and get (what I think is) the same. I think it’s a very thin film of something (not likely soap as I can get it without soap). I use white vinegar to dissolve it about once a month (making me think it’s basic, possibly calcium carbonate). Pour in a cup or so of white vinegar and set the pan to heat. When it’s hot but before it boils, swish it around and then pour it into the next pan. Rinse the first pan in plain water while the vinegar sits in the second. When the first pan is rinsed, pour the vinegar into the third, etc. Our stainless pans never see the inside of the dishwasher and still get this.
- exmadscientist 5y ago

raldi 5y ago

They didn't mention the most important tip: Most dishwashers draw from the hot water tap and then use the first ~gallon that comes out for the crucial first scrub, regardless of what temperature comes out the pipe. Thus, you'll get much better results if, right before pressing Start, you run the kitchen sink's hot water tap until it gets hot. Second best tip: Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. (The rest gets released in the secondary wash cycle.)

CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
I don't know about the UK but here in Europe dishwashers don't use the hot tap.
- bserge 5y ago
  Older ones did, same for washing machines. I guess it stuck in the US for whatever reason.
- duncans 5y ago
  Same in the UK. Most hook up to the cold water supply only.
RandallBrown 5y ago
>Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. Many (most?) dishwashers have a special section for putting soap that gets used in the pre-rinse cycle. In mine it would be functionally identical to spilling some extra detergent, but it's easier to consistently measure the right amount.
- raldi 5y ago
  True; we use a measuring spoon anyway to scoop 1 tsp into the box and 1/2 tsp to spill. (Turns out you don't need anywhere near what the box size suggests, and that can actually cause the drain to get gunked up with foam.)
- 5y ago

1970-01-01 5y ago

The Guardian left out what I consider the most likely 'failure mode' for someone that thinks dishwashers are a magical cleaning box. Make sure the spinning wash arms are not blocked AND everything is secure, so knives, forks, lids, etc. can not fall and block the wash arm's spin. Lots of cycles seem to fail around here when someone can't seem to remember how gravity still affects things in the dishwasher..

nate_meurer 5y ago
Yes. It took me a year to figure out why my Bosch sporadically left loads of dishes dirty. It turned out that some of our smaller square dishes are able to poke down through the rack far enough to stop the lower wash arm.

post_break 5y ago

Lemi shine is the game changer for us. A tiny bit into the machine and everything comes out way better. Unfortunately everyone is switching to pods which do a bad job in the dish washers I've used. Seems like only the dollar stores sell the dishwasher powder these days. Lemi shine and lemi shine boost, not paid by them but give it a try if your machine always does a bad job, a little goes a long way too. I originally found it by washing brass (I reload ammo).

wintermutestwin 5y ago
>Seems like only the dollar stores sell the dishwasher powder these days. Target and Trader Joes each have powdered. No need to stoop to dollar store levels ;)
- post_break 5y ago
  Don't knock dollar stores. I get a lot of stuff there because I don't need a large amount before it goes bad or stuff that is good enough or discounted.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sokoloff 5y ago

My tip: use the soap dispenser to tell you if the dishwasher is clean or not. After unloading, put a new tablet in and close the dispenser. Voila, closed dispenser == dirty dishes (or your dishwasher is broken :) )

capableweb 5y ago
I might be slightly old/senile/dumb but what problem does this solve? If the dishwasher contains dirty dishes, it's dirty and if not, it's not. Why would you need another signal to tell if it's dirty or not? Or I grandly miss the point here, sorry if so.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It is not always obvious whether the dishes are dirty, especially if you are in a household that does some amount of rinsing of dishes (or if you had a meal that didn't have a lot of color to it).
- mikestew 5y ago
  Does it contain dirty dishes, or did the spouse run the dishwasher while you weren't paying attention? Now you're stacking dirty dishes in with the clean (sure, the dishwasher was full, but you found a spot). Or your one sample dish was rinsed, and looks clean, so you start stacking dirty dishes in the cupboard... At our house, it's easier to just use a little magnet with clean/dirty on it to track dishwasher state. Or one can use the soap door suggestion above.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    It might be that my household eat food on plates very differently, but it's obvious if it's dirty or clean dishes in the dishwasher, as long as you open the door and look in. But I guess as the other comment mentioned, if you pre-wash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (not sure why you would, but let's run with it), then I can kind of see how it can be confusing.

exmadscientist 5y ago

The best way to load a dishwasher is to get a Miele. (At least the US models, I can't speak for other countries.) For Reasons, I've dealt with six dishwashers over the last decade. This one actually works. Anything that goes in and isn't ludicrously dirty or positioned just gets clean. It's wonderful not caring about top rack vs bottom rack or prewash or starting the hot water early or.... It just gets dishes clean.

koolba 5y ago
Miele and Maytag are the only brands I’ve seen that both consistently work and last for many many years. Ditto for Maytag laundry machines. Those things are tanks.
- exmadscientist 5y ago
  Having had the (unfortunate) opportunity to personally compare the Miele to the top-of-the-line-in-2014 Maytag back-to-back, the Miele is a different animal. Maytag does not build them like they used to.
  - serf 5y ago
    >Maytag does not build them like they used to. that has been my experience across their entire lineup since the early 2000s. some of their industrial style earlier stuff is fantastic, it's a shame they couldn't keep up with those standards.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Maytag is Whirlpoop now iirc
- missblit 5y ago
  My Maytag dryer is around 37 years old (older than I am!) and works great. So when I read articles claiming dryers have a life of around a decade I can't help but laugh.
gmac 5y ago

eschneider 5y ago

Pro-tip: While it's fun and awesome to optimize these little household tasks for maximum efficiency, it's not cool to criticize how your SO/housemates/whomever does it. This is not the hill to kill your relationships on.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vanderZwan 5y ago

> Despite all the caveats, dishwashers are not only the convenient answer to our modernist woes, they’re actually more energy- and water-efficient than hand washing. A full dishwasher can clean 144 items with roughly 13 litres of water, or anything between eight and 20. According to a study by the University of Bonn, hand washing the same load uses, on average, 100 litres of water. I genuinely wonder how people get up to 100 litres of water, or if my intuition regarding nr. of items vs water volume is just that far off. Are we sure this isn't measured by comparing to people using a constantly running tap for this instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Because I was pretty shocked to discover that most of my friends use a constantly running tap while washing the dishes.

anthony_romeo 5y ago
More often than not [at least where I happen to live in the US] I actually see kitchen sinks with only one basin (and often too small). One basin isn't really enough to efficiently clean dishes without it being a big hassle. I suspect that this is a multifaceted consequence of dishwashers becoming so commonplace, people cooking less and less, and constant attempts by owners to cut minor costs at the expense of tenants' standard of living.
MisterTea 5y ago
> instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Most people I know have one sink. Two sinks were found in rich peoples homes. Personally I really want one of those big commercial sink faucets that's a flexible shower head suspended by a spring BUT turned on by a momentary foot pedal instead of a squeeze valve on the head. The you have both hands free to rinse and scrub while your foot operates the faucet.
- em-bee 5y ago
  we actually have two sinks, but one sink is misused as as a drying rack because there is no other space. not having hands free to turn water on and off is also an issue i ran into resulting in letting water running more often than necessary.
- 5y ago

zeroonetwothree 5y ago

Despite all the advice, I’ve been washing knives in the dishwasher for a decade and they are still totally fine. They certainly don’t “rust”. What kind of metal are these people making knives out of?

toast0 5y ago
Depends on your detergent too, the lemon scented stuff seems to induce way more rust than the unscented.
anderiv 5y ago
The alloy of high-carbon steel that is used in many high-end knives will absolutely rust if washed in the dishwasher. Stainless steel knives generally won't rust, of course.
exmadscientist 5y ago
Dishwashers tend to destroy the handles and edges of knives. If your knives survive... what kind are they, so I can buy some?
- raldi 5y ago
  I've got a cheap chef's knife from the restaurant-supply store — I think it was $30 — and have been dishwashing it exclusively since 2009, and it's totally fine. https://i.imgur.com/tL699FA.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tL699FA.jpg
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008M5U1C2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008M5U1C2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... These are highly recommended for a being cheap yet good chef's knife. Mine has survived 5 years of daily dishwasher cleaning...
  - DiabloD3 5y ago
    I also use Victorinox Fibrox Pro series knives. They're inexpensive, partially forged, easy to sharpen, and stay sharp surprisingly long as long as you take care of them. I do not dishwasher mine, however, and I do not soak them.

lukateake 5y ago

PRO-TIP: when unloading the dishwasher start from the bottom and work your way up. Doing so prevents an accidental, upside-down cup or bowl from spilling water on your clean dishes beneath.

mr337 5y ago

So one thing that really surprised me is the little pocket on the soap tray. I started adding some liquid soap there as part of the loading and saw a big improvement on cleaning result. The idea is during the first pre cleaning cycle the soap will start working so you add the detergent on dish time. https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04 https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04

xyzzy21 5y ago

Pre-rinse is useful, and particularly for older dish washers, while the pre-rinse mode on dish washers themselves is EXTREMELY useful - probably necessary to be actually water and energy efficient while still cleaning. Pre-rinse is generally ALWAYS done anyway but using detergent during it is a good idea. Pre-rinse mode in the dishwasher involves a first water and soap wash before the water recycling main wash occurs. Most grease can be removed with the pre-rinse cycle when detergent is used. This prevents having grease "re-applied" to the dishes during the main cycle and its repeated water recycles upon the dishes. Pre-rinse can always be done with or without detergent - some dishwashers do not have a dedicated holder for the detergent but only an indented space next to the normal cycle detergent holder. Use this for a detergent pre-rinse. Pre-rinsing in the sink before loading is still often necessary - no dishwasher is as effective at cleaning as hand washing. And especially when a dishwasher gets old, that already lesser effectiveness gets worse. Honestly this article sounds like a dishwasher PR story planted in the normal news. This IS HOW MOST NEWS SOURCES OPERATOR now: a PR firm/group at a corporation will write a bunch of pro-Firm/pro-Product articles FOR use by magazines, newspapers, syndication, etc. This started to happen in the 1990s and now is pretty much all stories because 1) news organizations no longer have reporters at all or have no reporters "in the field" at all, and 2) the pay isn't good enough to do "real journalism" any more. I worked for a Fortune 25 company that was on the vanguard of this kind of PR-to-News system. It worked really well because editors are LAZY as are far too many journalists!

m3kw9 5y ago

I think time is the ultimate measurement when using dishwasher. The trick is to know if you can load the dish washer faster than you clean it by hand. You start measuring at the point you stand in-front of the sink and end when you press the start button.

dredmorbius 5y ago
I'd count the unloading phase as well. With hand-washed dishes, there should be no ambiguity over whether or not the dishes are clean or not (if they're in the drying rack, they're clean). With the dishwasher, not only can I not immediately tell, but often what's been washed is not in fact clean.
- m3kw9 5y ago
  I would think unloading from a dish washer is faster than from the drying rack as it is more organized so easier to grab similar dishes. The drying rack gets chaotic once you get large amounts. As for dishes not cleaned, that is true, you’d need to count that somehow into a bigger equation.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Maybe I'm just fanatical about how I organise my drying rack ;-) The fact that it's at counter-height helps. I find that chore pretty straightforward.

forgotmypw17 5y ago

Almost all dishwasher detergents have some gnarly chemicals in them you don't want to read the sheets on. And most dishwashers I have inspected leave a bit of soap residue on all the dishes. You can easily see this for yourself by filling a "clean" glass with water and observing the soapy bubbles. If you rinse it thoroughly and try again, they will not be there. Another one of modern life's intelligence tests, if you ask me. I avoid them, and I rinse dishes which come out of one thoroughly before using them.

nate_meurer 5y ago
What gnarly chemicals?
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  have a look for yourself https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/1604-CascadeDishwasherDetergentGel/ https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/1604-CascadeDishwasherDe... a small portion you eat and drink, most of it ends up harming animals downstream. by buying it, you also support its harmful production process.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    I appreciate people like you who care about the effects of the products we buy on ourselves and the environment. I do too. But while the EWG does some OK work, they also do a lot of fearmongering, and you can plainly see it in this link. Look at the three big scary red "F" items. The first scary red "F" is sodium hypochlorite. This is ordinary bleach. EWG cites two reasons for the big scary "F". The first is aquatic toxicity. This is a badly misplaced fear. Consider the fact that chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in municipal water systems, in the form of hypochlorite and chloramine. Chlorine is dumped by the ton into the water that comes out of your taps and goes down your drains. The extra chlorine from dish detergents is insignificant compared to this and other sources such as laundry bleach. Also under the chlorine entry, EWG lists a few organic chlorine compounds. This is very misleading. Detergents don't contain any of these chemicals. Rather, they can possibly be generated when free chlorine is added to water containing a lot of organics. Many organohalogens are indeed toxic, but by far most of them that you'll encounter are generated by municipal water treatment systems. You drink and bathe in water that contains random organohalogens every day, by virtue of the chlorine used in municipal treatment. The small extra quantities generated in your dishwasher aren't a threat to you unless you make it a habit to drink the exhaust water. The second scary red "F" on their list is zinc carbonate. This is absurd. They say it's primarily because of its potential effects on aquatic life, which I suppose might be a consideration if someone tries to use dishwasher detergent to clean a fish tank. The second reason is "general systemic/organ effects". This is the really absurd part. Zinc is an essential mineral in the human diet in large quantities. In very high doses over time, excess zinc can cause problems, but such large doses have nothing to do with dishwasher detergent residues. You'd have to actually eat large quantities of detergent daily for a long period of time, and even that would be unlikely to cause zinc overdose because the carbonate form has low bioavailability. The third scary red "F" is "colors". They don't say what the colors are, or why they would be more of a concern than in any other cosmetic or cleaning product. The fourth scary red "F" is "stabilizer". They don't say what the chemical is, so there's no way to know whether it's any less bullshit than the first three, or even if it exists in the product. The scary orange "D" items continue the absurdity: - Nitric acid: I think EWG is confused here. Nitric acid would be used only in minute quantities to adjust pH. Dishwasher detergents are very alkaline, so it's not possible for nitric acid to remain in a liquid product. - Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you. - Polyacrylates: you know where else you'll find polyacrylates? Fucking everywhere. Nearly every liquid cosmetic product you'll find uses polyacrylates. Shampoos, hand soap, dish soap, etc. All baby diapers are now filled with polyacrylates. They're added to potting soil to increase moisture retention. Don't eat too much of the solid form because it can expand in your stomach and cause bloating and possibly blockage, but tiny amounts of them are not the least bit threatening in your dishwasher. In summary, don't blindly trust the EWG. None of these ingredients is the least bit dangerous even if they remained in significant quantities on your dishes, which they don't.

clipradiowallet 5y ago

Just a note for people who do NOT have sewage service(ie you have a septic tank). You should be rinsing ALL your dishes before using the dishwasher, capturing the solids in a strainer, and putting them in your trash. Solid food that magically is cleaned by your dishwasher goes into your septic system and significantly reduces time-to-failure, or at the least time-till-you-have-it-pumped-to-avoid-failure.

nathancahill 5y ago
My friends load up their dishwasher without rinsing, then call their pup over to clean off the food. Does an excellent job too.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  My friends load up their dishwasher without rinsing, then call their pup over to clean off the food They must have a small dog, if it fits inside a dishwasher.
jefftk 5y ago
Is the thin layer on plates significant, relative to the human waste solids already going into your septic system?
- clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Without going into the icky details too much... yes it is relevant. Even something like grated carrots will sit in your septic tank for years without decaying. This is largely due to the temperature - it's far too cold to get the easy rotting and composting effect you would see if you left it outside in the sun. The solids you are mentioning are already digested, and are much easier for the bacteria in your septic tank to break down and reach a soluble/flowing state that can pass into your drainage field. Another good example that is REALLY common to see clogging the septic tank exit is coffee grounds - which would compost very quickly in the sunshine, but will last forever in your septic tank and contribute to a very thick "sludge" layer on the bottom. That layer never goes anywhere, and as it grows the capacity of your septic tank shrinks. This will go on until the sludge reaches the exit level and causes the septic system to fail, or until you have it pumped.

spindo 5y ago

Off-topic. I moved into a place 10 years ago, and haven’t used the dishwasher even once. I now want to use it. Any tips on how to prepare it given that lots of “stuff” is probably backed up in its plumbing?

jms703 5y ago
Run an empty load and add a cup of white vinegar.
n8cpdx 5y ago
Clean out the filter(s) and consider running a clean cycle. I bought a heavily used portable unit a few years ago and lemi-shine did a great job. I've had good results with affresh in other appliances. I really don't think brand matters too much, the cleaning solution is pretty basic. Usually they drain into the garbage disposal if preinstalled, so if your sink works the dishwasher is probably fine.
tmountain 5y ago
Often time they share an outflow with the kitchen sink, so the plumbing may not be as backed up as you imagine provided that you use the sink regularly. That said, proceed with caution.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

comeonseriously 5y ago

> “The dishwasher is this wonderful thing but it did, in truth, produce a kind of idiot-worker in the kitchen because it took away the intuition of doing the dishes,” he tells Guardian Australia from his home in Seattle. “I want to get my hands on the thing, [like] cooking is getting your hands on what you’re doing.” Don't let the dishwasher dry the dishes. Take them out and dry them yourself and you can make sure they're all clean.

zaat 5y ago
> The hand washing enthusiast says the best way to know if something’s clean is to take your time to look at it and feel it. You’ll know immediately if something’s dirty when you run your fingers along the surface. Sure, regardless of the dish's state before, after you run your fingers on it it isn't clean anymore.
- missblit 5y ago
  Touching a clean dish with a clean finger won't make it unsanitary or gross.
- comeonseriously 5y ago
  Kitchen gloves.

eecc 5y ago

I need to get the food encrusting off the cutlery or I’ll get scorched remains of them when the washing is over. But perhaps I’ll stop wiping the plates and leave more of that grime for the sensors

codezero 5y ago

> The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month. Uhhh, I am not the only person who doesn't clean that, or didn't know there was one? Luckily a do a bit of pre-wash so there shouldn't really be food debris to capture, but now I'm dreading checking the thing after ten years lol. I wonder if my apartment's maintenance people check it when they change my air filters and carbon monoxide detectors and I didn't notice. I'm dreading finding out.

cogman10 5y ago
Not all dishwashers have a food filter. Many will simply grind up the food stuffs much like a garbage disposal does.
- codezero 5y ago
  Time to check mine, I suspect it has such a feature since it hasn’t broken in ten years without removing debris :)

throwaway20371 5y ago

Is literally nobody gonna talk about regularly descaling the washer for hard water??? Do you want calcium build-up on your dishes and a half broken machine?

blunte 5y ago

They say to put the dirtier things at the bottom since that's where the strong jets of water come from. Then they say to put cutlery face down so it gets cleaner. What about the other side of the cutlery? Was only one side dirty? And then, the no-prewash directive... If you put dishes with stuck-on food into the dishwasher, there's some chance that the stuck-on food will not come off. Then that food gets baked on during the drying cycle. It may be sanitary, but it's is not something I want. Until someone can draw the line between "some bacteria is good for you and makes you stronger" and "oh this will cause you grief or death", I still err on the side over serious pre-cleaning and then hot dishwashing.

choward 5y ago
I only run my dishwasher once or twice a week. I don't want food stuck to my dishes for that long. I always rinse/prewash.
bonestamp2 5y ago
> What about the other side of the cutlery? Was only one side dirty? I read this as the handle should be at the top and the points ("face"?) should be at the bottom (assuming vertical cutlery bins). I know some people who swear the handles should be on the bottom and the points should be on top.
bonestamp2 5y ago
I pre-clean too. But, the thing that really kills the bacteria is not the hot water (it's not hot enough), it's the bleach in the dishwasher detergent (bleach is a chemical sterilizer).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Also the alkalinity of the detergent. Much as with soap, that disrupts lipid membranes in bacteria and viruses. The "20 second" rule for handwashing is mostly about how long germs need to be in contact with soap before they're mostly dead. (Mostly dead isn't all dead </MiracleMax>) You may still have dirt/soil on your hands after 20s, but it's pretty much sterilised.

peanut_worm 5y ago

Has anyone tried one of those tiny countertop dishwashers? I just got one and I think its neat. I guess thats how I can tell I am getting older.

qiqitori 5y ago
I got one about 2.5 months ago. (Called "Novete" in the US, AINX in Japan -- names in other countries may vary.) It works pretty well, but there's no pre-wash cycle. "Finish" tabs sometimes left behind a thin oil film on all dishes when the dishwasher was at full capacity. I obtained a reportedly better detergent now (only available locally), not tabs but powder, and am using more, or less, depending on how full the dishwasher is, and haven't had any problems since. The tray is showing some discoloration -- maybe using too much detergent? There is some very minor leakage when the door is open -- the rubber has become slightly loose at the edge. Pushing it in a bit after opening the door effectively fixes the problem. Doesn't look like it could turn into a problem while actually in use. I really like that I don't have to bend over in order to load/unload it. Inspecting it to search for potential problems is very easy too -- maybe I wouldn't have been able to decide whether the minor leakage I mentioned above was a major problem or something that can be mostly ignored. I also really like that the door is see-through. You can easily tell what objects is causing noises or if the rotors are rotating properly. I use it every day, so probably 100 times already at this point. I wish it was more programmable, but it's very set in its ways. I fill up the tank manually, and the drain hose leads into a bucket. Also wish it was a bit quieter.

mdavis6890 5y ago

I am totally fine if some of my dishes need to be re-washed by hand, as long as I have to spend zero additional minutes thinking about pre-washing or how to load my dishwasher.

spiffytech 5y ago
I'm the opposite: I'm happy to do some up-front prep / thinking if it means I don't have to second-guess whether the dishwasher did its job. Prep feels like helping it do its job, re-washing feels like doing its job for it.

scrubs 5y ago

Sent this to the wife who has a touch of ocd and is quite clear and explicit about prewash cleanup and what goes where in the dishwasher. She replied that she thought she'd better not read it cause it might make a point. I don't care much either way ... but now there will be an extra smile around the kitchen as this rattles around her brain

smetj 5y ago

Just buy the most common day-to-day things 3-fold. Regular drinking glasses, cutlery, plates, cups. This way you can keep taking clean ones whilst filling up the dishwasher with dirty ones. This way the dishwasher doesn't need to run half-full if you ran out of stuff. Pots and pans are big and quick to clean by hand.

Groxx 5y ago

.... it depends a lot on the dishwasher. Though yes, detergent is nasty stuff and the damage accumulates, even if you find a relatively gentle one. But for example, no, my relatively-recently-built dishwasher does not have a turbidity sensor; cycles run on a timer, nothing more. I'm in an apartment. A significant portion of the US population is as well. The built-in dishwasher here is just shy of being garbage (I've had far worse, this one is acceptable). A lot of those intelligent design things do not exist in it, because it was made for bottom-dollar bulk sales. Using the pre-rinsing cycle has had an absolutely massively improved cleaning quality for us, and pre-wash soap has done absolutely nothing unless dishes have massive amounts of crud on them (and even then, the pre-rinse does dramatically more).