I got a new dishwasher yesterday. I had been washing my dishes by hand for 2 years, and I just wanted to say that now that I have a dishwasher, only insane people wash their dishes by hand.
That is all.
*** Update ***
FYI- a funny anecdote. As an undergrad many years ago, in a drunken stupor I came home and put all the clothes I had been wearing in the dishwasher and blew up some component because my jeans got wrapped around the agitator thing at the bottom. True story.
I guess I thought it was the washing machine. I also recently lost my cell phone and found it in the freezer. Unfortunately I was sober when I did that.
RSA
I was without a dishwasher for two or three years (our old one broke down, and out of laziness or whatever motivation, I never got it fixed or replaced). Same reaction when I moved to an apartment that actually had a working dishwasher. “Jesus–how much time did I waste washing dishes by hand?”
capelza
I love to wash my dishes by hand! Calling me crazy, John Cole?1? (stands in thread with hands on hips, still holding the slightly damp dish towel in one hand and tapping her toe. Well, are you?
Seriously, congratulations. While I do love to wash dishes, I hate to put them away and so my drainer stacks up in Rube Goldbergesque puzzles that frighten my husband. A dishwasher would solve that problem.
Pb
Yeah, dishwashers are awesome, everybody should have one. We should raise the dishwasher budget in the reconstruction budget for Iraq. That is, if we’ll even have a reconstruction budget for Iraq. And if they had sufficient water for it.
skip
Dishes?
I thought all real Mountaineers served their Easter possum on paper plates.
ChristieS
Sign me up for a white coat, then. I just bought a new house and the first thing I did was yank the dishwasher out and put in more cabinet space. Just like I did with the one in our former house.
My family seemed to be unable to help with the KP duty when we had a dishwasher. Dishes still ended up piled on the counter waiting for someone to load the damned thing. I solved that problem by getting rid of the machine. Now, (except after meals where we take turns,) everyone washes their own damned dishes because I quit.
Davebo
Good for you John!
And here’s to hoping you didn’t go cheap. There are few engineering marvels on this planet, but one surely is the Fischer Paykel Dish Drawer.
This baby is so quiet you won’t even know it’s running! And with it’s unique two drawer design you can actually clean an entire dinner party’s worth of dishes in the top drawer while simultaneously washing out Jeff Goldstien’s mouth in the lower drawer!
Another reason to love New Zealanders!
slickdpdx
I prefer hand washing, but I admit I do it rarely now that we have a dishwasher…Go ChristieS!
neil
You think that’s bad? I didn’t even have hot water in my house until last month. Not only did I do dishes by hand, but I had to heat water on the stove to do it.
Now I live like a king.
Katinula
I washed dishes for 2. 5 years by hand. It is not a stricly enforced law in my home that no dishes will be washed by hand. Only problem, I live alone, so I run out of dishes before the dishwasher is full. I haven’t quite figured that out yet.
The Other Steve
I have a KitchenAid I bought in my new house two years ago. It’s a mid line one. Not the cheapest, and not the most expensive. But it’s seriously quiet, and it washes things very well.
The Fisher Paykel dish drawer has only one appeal to me.
My dream kitchen has two dishwashers. One for clean dishes, one for dirty. I feel that would be more efficient, as I would never have to put the dishes back into a cupboard. The Fisher Paykel allows you to do this in an existing dishwasher slot, otherwise I have to remove a lower cabinet and run new plumbing. :-)
ubernerd83
I once did two or three loads of laundry while I was highly intoxicated. Probably one of the most intoxicated times in my life, actually. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea to carry loads of laundry up and down the dark stairwell between the basement and second floor of my fraternity, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And some how, I didn’t ruin anything.
The Other Steve
Ok, my true story.
We were leaving my girlfriend’s trailer one night. I picked up a bag of trash and threw it in the trash can on my way out.
I got into the car and realized I didn’t have my cell phone. I sat for a minute thinking where did I put that. Checked my pockets. Walked back into the house looked around.
Then it dawned on me.
Fortunately the only thing in the trash can was that bag I had put in there, so it was easy to retrieve my cell phone from the bottom. :-)
Davebo
The Other Steve
Actually the ideal is to have the two single dish drawers mounted on either side of your sink with cabinet space below. No bending over to load.
Unfortunately I had to go with the stacked model due to my cabinet layout and all.
Admittedly I am an elitist when it comes to appliances. You should see my coffee maker.
Vlad
Since you’re new with the whole dishwasher thing, John, make sure you leave the door closed when you aren’t actively loading/unloading. I have a friend who lost a pet ferret that way, and I’d hate to see something bad happen to Tunch.
Andrew
TOS, hey, I just got a mid-grade Kitchen Aid too.
It is damn quiet. A ceiling fan is louder for most of the wash cycle.
tzs
Um, once I set the oven on fire…
Location: Japan. Stove: One of those little two gas-burners-with-a-fish-grill-underneath thingie.
I had bought a package of three salmon slices and decided to cook them one after another (grill only had room for one at a time.)
What I hadn’t realized was the amount of fish oil that was building up in the drip pan…or that it was steadily getting hotter and hotter.
Halfway through Slice 3, flash point. Everything caught on fire.
I remember looking at it, saying to myself DON’T PANIC, then quickly turning the gas off. Flames still going, me looking at it. Thought: fire=fuel + heat + oxygen. Existence of fuel–check. Existence of heat–check. Do I really want to open the grill door and add more oxygen to the mix? I don’t think so…just waited until the flames finally died down.
Result–one slightly warped fish grill and one very charred piece of fish. And a firm lesson to Stop Grilling After Slice One.
Punchy
Mr. Cole, you’re not the only one who’s tried washing clothes in the dishwasher. College apts almost always came with dishwashers, but rarely with washing machines. As a result, many a Levi and Old Navy was cleaned with Cascade insteada Tide…
(By the way, don’t ever try Tide in the dishwasher, as we did when we ran out of Cascade. Same goes for Palmolive. Talk about a soap suds disaster).
Since we’re on an appliance thread, a show of hands of those who drunkenly left pizzas in the oven overnight after passing out? Anyone drop a metal spoon into a spinning blender? Leave a six-pack of beer in the freezer overnight by mistake? Pee on their stove, inebriated, thinking they were in the bathroom?
Andrew
The best coffee maker in the world costs $30.
neil
I looked at Andrew’s link and thought, “Aerobie? Aren’t they the company that makes those flying discs?”
They are. Now I want one of those coffee makers.
Davebo
Andrew, you’ve got to be kidding! It’s a freakin French Press!
Davebo
Uniform of the Day for Pajamas Media bloggers?
neil
The page includes an indignant passage about how, NO, it is NOT a French press so STOP CALLING IT THAT.
Me, I swear by stovetop espresso makers. But I strongly caution against using them while drunk.
Andrew
No it’s not!!!
It’s makes AWESOME espresso. Absolutely fantastic. And I can make a quad espresso Americano in 4 minutes from start to everything cleaned up and drinking it.
And yes, it’s by the guy who invented the Aerobie. He has done nothing but optimize the design of the Aeropress for the past five years. It’s insane.
Davebo
Andrew
From whole bean Jamaica Blue Mountain to perfect espresso in 30 seconds.
With nothing whatsoever to clean up.
And I love that domain name~!
Andrew
Davebo, are you posting your comments on BJ from that thing?
I tend to rule out coffee machines that cost as much as buying a car and driving to Starbucks for a year.
Davebo
Trust me Andrew.
Get one of those and you’ll never bother with crappy over roasted Starbucks coffee again.
Andrew
Well, yes, I don’t actually go to starbucks, but “locally owned organic in-house roastery and exotic tea bar” seemd a little wordy.
Pb
Those crazy machines are reason #2893 why I drink Coca-Cola. Hey, now that we’ve got front-page posts from wine snobs, beer snobs, food snobs, etc., etc., aren’t we missing a coffee snob? That’s not an endorsement of the idea, mind you, just an observation.
Bombadil
OK
Bombadil
Weird — that didn’t go through as planned. Here’s what I tried to say:
OK BJ Commenters, some perspective here.
We’ve been whining this week that Mr. Cole’s postings have lacked substance. Today he posted a great item about changes in stem cell creation and has (at this time) 8 comments there. Yet when he posts about his damn dishwasher he gets nearly 30 comments?
(Congratulations, by the way, John — I’m jealous as our dishwasher is currently out of commission.)
Kirk Spencer
One lesson learned some time ago is that a full dishwasher is almost always a bad thing. Yep, you save on how much hot water you use to wash the whole thing. But inevitably you have dishes so close together that the spray reaching them is the result of a couple of rebounds – not very powerful at all. By leaving some space between the dishes – say, spreading out a 3/4 load across the whole – your dishes will be much cleaner.
Which is what it’s supposed to do, after all.
Ryan S.
So Mr. Cole the dishwasher you bought retroactively undid your craziness for not having one?
I didn’t expect you to Specter on us so easily.
tzs
Neil, thanks for the link to the stovetop expresso makers. I never realized there were so many stainless steel ones! (Have a stainless steel one, carted it all over the world, had to leave it behind in London, replaced it ASAP.) Fantastic for a cuppa in the morning. Simply use fill the top half-way rather than full and get a good cup of coffee.
Keith
I just got a new washer last week (to replace a dying one). Went through hell trying to get Best Buy to install it (they had Whirlpool deliver, but Whirlpool wouldn’t install, while BB said it was supposed to be, and they forwarded my complaints on to some unreachable “Research” department). Finally, after a week & a half, they decided to refund my installation money so that I got the joy of installing it myself. So basically, the money to install was kind of a loaner to BB while they thought about whether or not they wanted to do their job.
So lesson to all: Don’t buy anything from Best Buy that is more expensive than a video game or CD; go to Sears instead.
The Other Steve
Actually the best coffee I ever had was from a French Press in London.
I don’t normally like coffee. I like it smooth, and I think Americans burn their beans or something.
John Cole
The only way to make coffee is with a
FrenchFreedom Press.Tony Alva
Did the phone work after you found it in the fridge?
Krista
Sigh…I miss my dishwasher. We had one in our old apartment, and now we don’t have one in this apartment, and I hate it. The bf offers to wash the dishes, but he constantly misses stuff on them (I actually once found him doing dishes by only the light on the stove, so no bloody wonder.) So, I either wash them myself, or seethe.
I really miss my dishwasher…
SeesThroughIt
Preach it, sister!
When I first moved out here to Cali, I was really living it up–dishwasher, washer/dryer, nifty in-sink disposal dealie, garage, the works. Now, I’ve got none of the above, save for coin-op washers and dryers in the basement of my apartment building. Bleh.
Gary Farber
“I had been washing my dishes by hand for 2 years, and I just wanted to say that now that I have a dishwasher, only insane people wash their dishes by hand.”
Alternatively, John, my understanding is that you’re a guy who lives alone (with Tunch, to be sure), as am I. I’ve always found it the easiest thing in the world to swipe a plate and a fork, or a spoon and a mug, under running water.
But now you’re using a ton of electricity to save the effort of lazily moving your hand around a few times.
Who’s “insane,” again, here? Or helping the environment, and the country?
Tsk. Why do you hate America, John?
;-)
Krista
SeesThroughIt: Indeed. We’re in the midst of house-hunting, and I’ve told the bf that a dishwasher is non-negotiable. (Now if only they’d invent an automatic laundry folder…)
The Other Steve
Krista… I have to break this to you as long as you promise to note tell my girlfriend. :-)
He’s doing a bad job on purpose to get out of washing dishes.
As for automatic folding:
http://www.flipfold.com
:-)
Digital Amish
Dishwashers? Washing dishes by hand? So just what in the hell do you propose we do with the dog?
Krista
TOS – You’re probably right. He has an astonishing attention to detail when it comes to things he cares about. But if he doesn’t care…well, he just won’t even see that there’s still rice stuck between the tines of the fork. Fortunately, his attention to detail is excellent when it comes to scrubbing the bathroom, so at least there’s that.
And I’m firmly of the opinion that if you can afford to hire someone to come in and clean once a week, do it. It’ll do wonders for your relationship.
Jimitha
It’s really nice of them to chip in 2 free pounds of coffee with your $2,000 purchase.