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The myth that a dishwasher is more efficient than handwashing is perhaps the biggest hoodwink perpetrated on the millennial consumer.
by paulcole 3y ago
The myth that a dishwasher is more efficient than handwashing is perhaps the biggest hoodwink perpetrated on the millennial consumer.
- icehawk 3y agoDoing things I enjoy, versus standing at the sink doing dishes is a pretty big efficiency gain for me.
- linsomniac 3y agoCitation needed...
- sitharus 3y agoHaving grown up rurally on a limited water supply, I know you can do the dishes for a family of four in about 10L/2.5 gallons of water. You just have to scrape off all the solids first (four-legged helpers excel at this). If you want you can have a second small rinsing sink. When I moved to a city I found a lot of people wash with running water or change at the first hint of it getting dirty. However now I live in a city and have things to do, a dishwasher is great because no matter how long it takes I’m not doing the dishes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- linsomniac 3y agoOk, I'll agree that you CAN do it. However, outside of camping, I don't think I've ever seen someone actually do that. But, I'll concede that. My dishwasher uses 3.15 gallons on a normal wash cycle, which I don't feel too bad about.
- Rapzid 3y agoInteresting, what do you mean by limited water supply? I grew up on pump water and it was unlimited. Hard as shit, but unlimited.
- sitharus 3y agoIn New Zealand rural water supply is often rain water, so in the summer months where there's little rain you only have what's in the tank. You can order water from a commercial water suppliers of course, but why pay extra if you can avoid it?
- vel0city 3y agoInteresting. Are there technical challenges with ground water or is it a legal challenge?
- sitharus 3y agoTechnical. A lot of NZ is mountainous country with volcanic soil on top of impermeable clays, which means there's very little groundwater. Some of the alluvial areas have plentiful groundwater and they use wells, but the majority of rural areas just use rainwater. It's cheap and easy to collect.
- vel0city 3y agoThat makes a lot of sense. I didn't think about the volcanic soils and their relation to ground water challenges. I imagine they might also get a good bit of rainfall often so that might make it even easier for rainfall collection. Thanks!
- toast0 3y agoSome people don't have a great well, and you can't pull much water at any given time. Or in the rainy season it's great, and in the dry season it's not. Or you might rely on water supplied by a water truck, in which case, you're going to be real conservative, cause that's probably not cheap.
- paulcole 3y agoI can record myself doing my dishes by hand if that helps?
- otterley 3y agoYou'll need to measure the amount of water you use in the process. Modern Energy Star-compliant models use less than 4 gallons per load. And don't forget to wash the same number of dishes as a full dishwasher load!
- RankingMember 3y agoI'd watch a head-to-head with water consumption tracked. You can be the John Henry of our time.
- ungamedplayer 3y agoChores.tv like and subscribe on twitch.
- wackget 3y agoYou haven't seen the shit I throw in my dishwasher every few nights. Seriously. It is jam-fucking-packed to the gills with the nastiest, filthiest, greasiest crap you can imagine. That it uses only a few litres of water to clean it is a miracle in itself, not to mention the countless hours it's saved me from scrubbing. In my house, the dishwasher is orders of magnitudes more efficient than hand-washing.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoYeah, you honestly don't even need worry about anything besides the labor efficiency, because that alone is already a big deal. I guess some people just forget that labor saving devices were invented to save labor. Maybe they re-use the same dish over and over, don't bake, and don't cook with any fats or something.
- paulcole 3y agoInteresting. In my house handwashing is orders of magnitude more efficient than using a dishwasher. I guess on average neither is more efficient.
- chongli 3y agoEither your dishwasher isn't very good or you aren't using it properly. You should be using powder in both boxes so the prewash cycle and the main cycle can work [1]. Pods? Waste of money! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
- sitharus 3y agoI actually checked this, on the regular (2 hour) cycle my dishwasher just opens the main detergent dispenser immediately. I have no idea why. The one hour cycle actually does a prewash.
- selcuka 3y agoAgain, what do you mean by "efficient"? I value my time over anything else, so for me handwashing is not efficient at all, unless it takes shorter than loading and unloading the machine.
- quickthrower2 3y ago"Efficient" as in energy efficient, human time efficient, or efficient at preventing mold/bacteria etc.? I suspect it is more efficient at creating germ-free clean dishes, given the temperatures and steam that the wares are exposed to. I suspect it is quicker than human time than hand washing It might be slower than human time from stopwatch dirty dish to clean dish. It might use more water than a hand washer who is very careful with water. It almost certainly costs more to use a dishwasher. Capital, costs, electricity, repairs, tabs.
- eru 3y agoMostly agreed. > I suspect it is more efficient at creating germ-free clean dishes, given the temperatures and steam that the wares are exposed to. Though you shouldn't worry too much about germs. The next time you are your food touches the dishes, they are all germed up again anyway. The amount of germ removal you get from hand-washing dishes is sufficient. (A dishwasher is still a good idea for saving on human labour.)