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And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone

by gzread 7mo ago

And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone.

ericmay 7mo ago
It's actually less productive for dishwasher-safe dishes, there's simply no question about that. Hand-washing dishes also, from what I understand, uses more energy and water than the dishwasher does.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- wiether 7mo ago
  It depends. I use the time I spend to hand-wash my dishes as a time to pause and to let my mind wander. Having the hands in water is soothing. And its a pleasant feeling, where cleaning is part of the food workflow : I cook, I eat, I clean (the kitchen, the dishes, my teeth). I hate home dishwashers: you have to play Tetris after each meal to fill them, trying not to get your hands/arms dirty, then you have to let it do the work, and now you have to spend a few minutes to get the dishes out and store them where they should be, even though most of them are not linked to a meal you just had. Maybe worse, you could unload the dishwasher at a time completely unrelated to food, so that breaks the link. On the other hand, having worked in restaurants, industrial dishwashers are awesome.
- LamaOfRuin 7mo ago
  This is in fact true (in the US at least), but part of why it is true is that people don't wash dishes the way they used to (with multiple bins of soapy + rinse water) and instead just run a bunch of hot water. Modern high-efficiency dishwashers probably beat the most efficient humans now, but that's relatively recent and not a huge margin (and may not get the same results).
- cogman10 7mo ago
  > Hand-washing dishes also, from what I understand, uses more energy and water than the dishwasher does. Correct, more energy, detergent, and water. Dishwashers are more efficient than what you can do by hand because they effectively manage their water usage. A modern dishwasher will use 3 to 4 gallons on a run. By comparison, my kitchen sink holds about 10 gallons of water on each side. When I wash by hand, I'll fill one side with soapy water and rinse each dish individually. Easily more than 10 gallons of water get used in the whole process. Dishwashers are so efficient because they rinse everything off the dishes with about ~1 gallons of water, they drain the water, then use detergent in the second run which gets off the tougher food stains, another 1 gallons of water. Then they rinse with another gallon of water. Dishwashers maximize getting food particulates into dirty water in a way that you can't really sanely do by hand.
  - Marsymars 7mo ago
    > A modern dishwasher will use 3 to 4 gallons on a run. By comparison, my kitchen sink holds about 10 gallons of water on each side. When I wash by hand, I'll fill one side with soapy water and rinse each dish individually. Easily more than 10 gallons of water get used in the whole process. I'm pro-dishwasher, but you could use much less water handwashing. If I don't have a dishwasher, my normal method is to stopper one side of my sink, squirt some dish soap on the first few dishes, and run just enough water to wet the dishes. Then I scrub some dishes, run the water (into the stoppered sink) just to rinse them as I transfer to the dish rack, then turn off the water and repeat. The dirtiest dishes that have the most food stuck on get done last so they get the most time soaking in the soapy rinse water from the rest of the dishes. I can do a full dishwasher load with one side of my sink maybe 1/4 full of water.
    - cogman10 7mo ago
      Time how long you run the sink while washing and rinsing. If you run it for more than 1.5 to 2 minutes, you've used more water than the dishwasher would have.
      - Marsymars 7mo ago
beanjuiceII 7mo ago
i wonder what people in restaurants use and why
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  From my experience, restaurants hand-wash some stuff (anything that needs scrubbing such as cookware) and use dishwashers for light-soil service items (plates, glasses, cutlery). But these aren't dishwashers like you have at home. They run very hot water and complete a wash/rinse in just minutes.
NiloCK 7mo ago
I've worked in dish pit. I can tell you that I didn't observe a single hand-wash-only holdout. Perhaps such holdouts existed at a point, but a restaurant can only flatter the ego of their performatively-unproductive seniors for so long. Competition exists.
gdhkgdhkvff 7mo ago
It is significantly less productive to hand wash dishes. But that’s fine to do manually if you wish for something that takes up maybe half an hour of your own time every several days. It’s not fine if washing dishes is your job. No company is going to hire an artisanal dish hand washer that refuses to use a dishwasher.
- chabes 7mo ago
  My parents (and many boomers in general) manually wash dishes and then still put them in the dishwasher. It is significantly less productive to do both, and yet…
  - esafak 7mo ago
    You don't want to burden your dishwasher!
  - gzread 7mo ago
    I was taught to give them a quick rinse but let the dishwasher make them sparkly clean. This avoids clogging the dishwasher's pipes with excessive food waste. Certainly any piece of food you could pick up between your fingers must be scraped in the bin before going in the dishwasher (or before hand washing).
threetonesun 7mo ago
It's less productive and it's less water efficient.
wiseowise 7mo ago
> And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone. That's completely, demonstratively false. Our dishwasher broke and we couldn't replace it for a month for different reasons – it was a complete nightmare. Without dishwasher: - You need to have a space to store dirty dishes - You must wash them right away, unless you want smell of rotten food that attracts all sorts of nasty from insects to rodents - You need to have a big enough kitchen sink to wash comfortably - You need to have a steady supply of hot water in the kitchen - You need to have a supply of latex gloves, unless you want your hands to look like they're 50 years old - You need to have a drying rack - It takes a shitton of time compared to loading dishwasher, starting it and forgetting about it - You need to clean up everything after you're done

by gzread 7mo ago

And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone.

ericmay 7mo ago

It's actually less productive for dishwasher-safe dishes, there's simply no question about that. Hand-washing dishes also, from what I understand, uses more energy and water than the dishwasher does.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
wiether 7mo ago
It depends. I use the time I spend to hand-wash my dishes as a time to pause and to let my mind wander. Having the hands in water is soothing. And its a pleasant feeling, where cleaning is part of the food workflow : I cook, I eat, I clean (the kitchen, the dishes, my teeth). I hate home dishwashers: you have to play Tetris after each meal to fill them, trying not to get your hands/arms dirty, then you have to let it do the work, and now you have to spend a few minutes to get the dishes out and store them where they should be, even though most of them are not linked to a meal you just had. Maybe worse, you could unload the dishwasher at a time completely unrelated to food, so that breaks the link. On the other hand, having worked in restaurants, industrial dishwashers are awesome.
LamaOfRuin 7mo ago
This is in fact true (in the US at least), but part of why it is true is that people don't wash dishes the way they used to (with multiple bins of soapy + rinse water) and instead just run a bunch of hot water. Modern high-efficiency dishwashers probably beat the most efficient humans now, but that's relatively recent and not a huge margin (and may not get the same results).
cogman10 7mo ago
> Hand-washing dishes also, from what I understand, uses more energy and water than the dishwasher does. Correct, more energy, detergent, and water. Dishwashers are more efficient than what you can do by hand because they effectively manage their water usage. A modern dishwasher will use 3 to 4 gallons on a run. By comparison, my kitchen sink holds about 10 gallons of water on each side. When I wash by hand, I'll fill one side with soapy water and rinse each dish individually. Easily more than 10 gallons of water get used in the whole process. Dishwashers are so efficient because they rinse everything off the dishes with about ~1 gallons of water, they drain the water, then use detergent in the second run which gets off the tougher food stains, another 1 gallons of water. Then they rinse with another gallon of water. Dishwashers maximize getting food particulates into dirty water in a way that you can't really sanely do by hand.
- Marsymars 7mo ago
  > A modern dishwasher will use 3 to 4 gallons on a run. By comparison, my kitchen sink holds about 10 gallons of water on each side. When I wash by hand, I'll fill one side with soapy water and rinse each dish individually. Easily more than 10 gallons of water get used in the whole process. I'm pro-dishwasher, but you could use much less water handwashing. If I don't have a dishwasher, my normal method is to stopper one side of my sink, squirt some dish soap on the first few dishes, and run just enough water to wet the dishes. Then I scrub some dishes, run the water (into the stoppered sink) just to rinse them as I transfer to the dish rack, then turn off the water and repeat. The dirtiest dishes that have the most food stuck on get done last so they get the most time soaking in the soapy rinse water from the rest of the dishes. I can do a full dishwasher load with one side of my sink maybe 1/4 full of water.
  - cogman10 7mo ago
    Time how long you run the sink while washing and rinsing. If you run it for more than 1.5 to 2 minutes, you've used more water than the dishwasher would have.
    - Marsymars 7mo ago

beanjuiceII 7mo ago

i wonder what people in restaurants use and why

SoftTalker 7mo ago
From my experience, restaurants hand-wash some stuff (anything that needs scrubbing such as cookware) and use dishwashers for light-soil service items (plates, glasses, cutlery). But these aren't dishwashers like you have at home. They run very hot water and complete a wash/rinse in just minutes.

NiloCK 7mo ago

I've worked in dish pit. I can tell you that I didn't observe a single hand-wash-only holdout. Perhaps such holdouts existed at a point, but a restaurant can only flatter the ego of their performatively-unproductive seniors for so long. Competition exists.

gdhkgdhkvff 7mo ago

It is significantly less productive to hand wash dishes. But that’s fine to do manually if you wish for something that takes up maybe half an hour of your own time every several days. It’s not fine if washing dishes is your job. No company is going to hire an artisanal dish hand washer that refuses to use a dishwasher.

chabes 7mo ago
My parents (and many boomers in general) manually wash dishes and then still put them in the dishwasher. It is significantly less productive to do both, and yet…
- esafak 7mo ago
  You don't want to burden your dishwasher!
- gzread 7mo ago
  I was taught to give them a quick rinse but let the dishwasher make them sparkly clean. This avoids clogging the dishwasher's pipes with excessive food waste. Certainly any piece of food you could pick up between your fingers must be scraped in the bin before going in the dishwasher (or before hand washing).

threetonesun 7mo ago

It's less productive and it's less water efficient.

wiseowise 7mo ago

> And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone. That's completely, demonstratively false. Our dishwasher broke and we couldn't replace it for a month for different reasons – it was a complete nightmare. Without dishwasher: - You need to have a space to store dirty dishes - You must wash them right away, unless you want smell of rotten food that attracts all sorts of nasty from insects to rodents - You need to have a big enough kitchen sink to wash comfortably - You need to have a steady supply of hot water in the kitchen - You need to have a supply of latex gloves, unless you want your hands to look like they're 50 years old - You need to have a drying rack - It takes a shitton of time compared to loading dishwasher, starting it and forgetting about it - You need to clean up everything after you're done