Until yesterday, I thought that opening a dishwasher door during a cycle would cause catastrophic flooding. I’ve never really thought about how dishwashers operate, though I recently purchased and helped install one.
When I was considering various units for my kitchen rehab, the sales dude did explain the differences between the different models and spraying doohickeys, but mostly all I heard was “Blah blah blah blah $450 dollars,” and “Blah blah blah blah $675 dollars.”
I guess I must’ve known on some level that a cycle didn’t entail the unit filling up completely with water. Why would it?
And yet I have always imagined exactly that, because yesterday, when my husband found a stray fork shortly after I’d started the dishwasher and went to open the door to add it to the rack, I reacted as if he’d moved to open the floodgates of the Hoover Dam.
We’ve been married long enough that he knows it’s pointless to argue with me, so he simply ignored my remonstrations and opened the door. And it just shut off. He added the fork and closed the door, and it started up again. It’s like the whole universe is a lie.
Wag
The ability to laugh at oneself is what separates Democrats from Republicans.
Joey Maloney
The whole universe is a lie. Your non-flooding dishwasher is like the top that never stops spinning.
Mrs. WhatsIt
I am glad to know I’m not the only one who did this. The first time my husband opened the door to stick something in, I was flabbergasted. I think I thought they were like clothes washing machines, although to be honest, I never spent much time on it. I still have a little hesitation when I need to open a dishwasher while it’s running, though!
gbear
The whole universe is too indifferent to bother with lying.
But it does blame Obama.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Tim Tebow Gets the Taiwanese Animation Treatment
Persia
@Mrs. WhatsIt: Same here. My boss actually did it at one of my first jobs and I think my eyes must’ve been like saucers.
MikeJ
@Wag:
Betty has still refused to call this terrorism. Benghazi!
gogol's wife
I am terrified of the dishwasher. I never use it, even after dinner parties.
BGinCHI
I’m pretty sure Mrs BG thinks that under a car hood is a tiny magician or a herd of small horses hitched to her drivetrain.
The combustion engine holds many mysteries.
PeakVT
The only thing opening a running dishwasher does is fog your glasses. So don’t open one when you’re driving a car and wearing glasses. That shouldn’t be hard.
El Cid
Good thing it doesn’t agitate and whirl all those plates and glasses around like a washing machine.
Tokyokie
@gogol’s wife: We never turn ours on, but I wouldn’t say we never use it. It makes a dandy dish drainer.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Wag:
Some years ago, I encountered that as the difference between a religion and a cult.
That’s quite a parallel, there.
jrg
The whole universe is indeed a lie. The last time I bought a dishwasher, I was comparing the mid and high-end models of a manufacturer (can’t remember which one). Among the differences between the two was that the high-end could be programmed to start in the next 24 hours while the mid-range could only be programmed to start in the next 12.
I’m pretty sure the cost of goods sold for that feature is the same to the manufacturer in both models, in fact, it probably cost them more to have separate 12 and a 24 hour programming cycles… But to keep the mid from cannibalizing the high, they crippled it.
Trinity
Dishwasher elves. They are in there with tiny sponges and hoses. They hide when you open the door.
srv
Imagine what else he is right about.
RobertB
Use _dishwashing_ liquid, instead of dishwasher detergent. Sit back and watch the fun. If you have a top-loading High-Efficiency washer, you can have similar fun by dumping laundry detergent straight into the laundry basket.
/swear to God, wasn’t me. As far as you can tell.
peach flavored shampoo
I’m pretty sure Republicans voted to fill up your dishwasher with water, but Obama vetoed it. Imagine the flood you’d have, and the carpet cleaning costs, if Romney had won.
J.
Personally, I think the statistic that more than 40% of U.S. adults argue about loading the dishwasher is low.
[The spouse and I have had the exact same conversation re the dishwasher, with similar result. That said, though, it depends on the setting and where you are in the cycle. We have a Miele that is around five years old, and water has occasionally gotten on the floor when certain people have opened it mid-cycle. Ahem.]
Hungry Joe
It was just a few months ago that I figured out — after decades, I tell you, decades — that if I press the vacuum cleaner’s cord-windup button with my foot instead of bending over and pressing it with my hand, the plug won’t whip around and hit me in the face. I used to press with my hand, flinch; press with my hand, flinch. Sometimes I can’t believe they let me run around loose.
replicnt6
@Trinity: When I was four, I truly believed that there were arms that came out inside the dishwasher and washed the dishes. This is why I ended up in software, and not hardware.
Ben Franklin
Economic Blockade and WikiLeaks: Iceland and Beyond
Julian Assange had been using that term for a time, but economic censorship is as close to the mark as any. If you want to shut someone up, deprive them of funding, cut off the supply, hope they go quietly into the night, hopefully without breaking too many things on the way. The whistleblowing conduit has, since its document releasing bonanzas of 2010, been blockaded. Opponents of WikiLeaks have been attempting to blackball not merely the outfit but its operations in every conceivable way.
Contractual obligations with financial providers have been repudiated. The actions by such companies as Visa and MasterCard has led to a 95 per cent fall in revenue. Last Wednesday, Iceland’s Supreme Court begged to differ on the wisdom of such decisions, claiming that MasterCard’s local partner, Valitor, had illegally terminated its contract with WikiLeaks’ payment processor, DataCell.
This was not as big a surprise as it might have been – a district court in Reykjavik had made a similar ruling last year, followed by the threat of a fine. Card holders, the court claimed, could not be deprived of their entitlement to make contributions to the site.
Valitor, the bench warned, would be fined 800,000 Icelandic krona ($6,824) per day if the gateway was not reopened within 15 days. Assange himself was buoyed, which is saying much since he has not had much to cheer of late. “We thank the Icelandic people for showing that they will not be bullied by powerful Washington-backed financial services companies like Visa.” For the WikiLeaks front man, the “economic blockade” has been nothing less than a censorship device that “threatens freedom of the press across Europe”.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1304/S00466/economic-blockade-and-wikileaks-iceland-and-beyond.htm
Using gunz is not terrorism, but bombers meet that criteria. What about the terror of information…..inconvenient info, for sure, but information we can’t otherwise acquire.
Central Planning
Is that a George Bush painting?
Amir Khalid
@PeakVT:
That warning applies to in-car dishwashers. Only really rich people can afford to have a dishwasher in their car. I’m pretty sure Betty said this one is in her kitchen.
Trinity
@replicnt6: lol…I do like that imagery though…body-less arms reaching out though the side of the machine to wash each dish. They could work in conjunction with the elves! ;)
Certified Mutant Enemy
“Dirty dishes go in, clean dishes come out. You can’t explain that.”
— Bill O’Reilly
shortstop
Your posts are such a damn pleasure, Bet.
gelfling545
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Oh, dear. I’m sure that’s not biblical.
piratedan
it’s not a dishwasher, it’s a dish sanitizer. A dishwasher is some guy named Duane working for 6.75 n hour in the back.
joel hanes
@gogol’s wife:
I am terrified of the dishwasher.
Fascinating.
What is the horrific potential outcome that inspires your terror? Will the infernal machine somehow hurt you? Or will it damage the dishes? Or will you do something wrong and humiliate yourself?
dr. luba
@Tokyokie: I use mine for storage. In a small kitchen, every little bit counts.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@RobertB:
Use _dishwashing_ liquid, instead of dishwasher detergent.
I did that when I was kid…
jl
Myself, probably because I belong to the ‘Cole school’ of household management, do not understand why the possibility of catastrophic flooding from an appliance should prevent you from fiddling around with it.
That may change if I ever get a front loading washer, though I think the door locks on those until the cycle is done. If I ever get one, I will probably end up, somehow or other, checking that out.
Michele C
@Hungry Joe: I just laughed out loud at work and since I don’t even have a cubicle, just a desk in the middle of the room, my colleagues had to wonder whether I was crazy. This is so funny to picture! Thank you. I’ve needed a lot of laughter lately.
WA_Dave
There is no spoon… in the dishwasher.
Cassidy
Seriously? No “cake is a lie” reference? I don’t even play the damn game!
Southern Beale
Betty:
If you want to have a fun time, fill the soap dispenser in your dishwasher with Dawn instead of regular dishwasher soap.
(Cue maniacal laugh ….)
Okay for a really REALLY good time, watch this video. It is the best thing, EVER. Really. This had me laughing and crying all at the same time. Dogs are involved.
shortstop
Our joint (for which we just accepted an offer for above list today after four days on the market, WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!) is a gut rehab which the satanic developer filled with needlessly advanced appliances to jack up the price. The dishwasher has every setting from “autoclave” to “Grandma’s Limoges gravy boat.” We only use “normal” and “speed cycle” with the heated dry always off. Hey, this comment would go just as well in Doug’s “Tell us what makes you a crotchety old goat who hates change” thread from yesterday.
liberal
What’s that number, in terms of years?
dedc79
Most depressing photo ever?
Michele C
@dedc79: Yes.
Trollhattan
In related news, sandwiches revealed to not contain sand.
Mysterious box is mysterious. When we remodeled the kitchen (a 70-year leap from circa 1928) wife.gov actually argued against a dishwasher. Bloody Nora, what’s the sense behind that? Didn’t trust them. To this day, I suspect out of resentment from having to give in (the contractor told her we’d have to reremodel if we ever wanted to sell the house) she refuses to learn to load the thing. She doesn’t quite put everything in a box and throw them into the dishwasher, but you can’t tell that’s not what she does. Which means unloading, then reloading before running. If I don’t do this, she’ll complain that the dishwasher is worthless because everything is still dirty (or my favorite–filled with scummy water). I warn her a team of German designers and engineers is itching to come over for a loading seminar.
The microwave was a whole other “conversation.”
Southern Beale
@srv:
LOL. Okay, you get the comment win for the day!
NonyNony
@Southern Beale:
Never ever do this.
I mean never.
The internet was made for us to benefit from the mistakes of others…
Betty Cracker
@liberal: 16. But he’d probably grasped the pointlessness of arguing thing by Year Two.
Trollhattan
@jl:
Warning, especially if you’re the curious sort, while there’s a loading door interlock, there’s also a (concealed) manual lock opener in case you HAVE to get it open. You will use it at some point, just because. A detergent-water slurry is actually a pretty good floor cleaner.
Axe me how I know.
? Martin
Biggest difference to look for in dishwashers:
American brands typically have a small garbage disposal in the drain to grind up any large stuff that comes off the dishes.
European brands have a screen that you need to manually tap out into your sink every month or so.
American dishwashers therefore tend to very noisy while European ones tend to be very quiet. My Bosch is quiet enough that I usually can’t tell if its running or not while sitting in the same room.
A good dishwasher is wonderful to use. A bad or mediocre one is a chore.
Southern Beale
Our house was build in 1947. When we remodeled the kitchen we uncovered some of the original electrical wiring. Apparently our house was one of the first to come wired with electricity. I find that hard to believe as electricity wasn’t exactly new then but this is Tennessee, after all.
Our contractor told us that back in those days, people would put plugs on their unused lightbulb sockets, they thought electricity was like gas and would just keep flowing out.
Butch
I remember when a big “gasket” for the dishwasher drain blew out once….I was fairly hung over that morning and just calmly stepped over the river of water running across the kitchen floor without even wondering about its origin.
Violet
@shortstop: When I had to get a new dishwasher, the installation guy told me the difference in electricity used in running the heated dry is negligible. Don’t know if he’s right, but that’s what he said.
For those of you not using your dishwasher, you’re supposed to run it every so often to keep the seals tight and so forth.
Southern Beale
@? Martin:
We have a Miele and love it to death. You can barely tell it’s on. Very water and energy efficient, too.
The downside is it’s small and I feel like we’re doing dishes every other day.
zombie rotten mcdonald
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
“Fucking dishwashers. How do THEY work?” – Insane Kitchen Posse.
Jebediah
@RobertB:
When I was younger and even dumber, I did that. Thought it would be OK since they both were used for cleaning dishes. Kitchen floor ended up pretty clean…
Betty Cracker
@Southern Beale: That was awesome. I wonder how long it took to get that routine down.
Redshirt
What’s the cost-benefit ratio to running the dishwasher or not? Does it always need to be filled for it to make sense? 3/4’s? Half?
I, too, fear the dishwasher. That little green man who removes spots off glasses lives in there.
Booger
@J.: No arguing anymore. I just go in and make it right at the end of the day before it runs, and either (1) folks think we have a magic self-organizing dishwasher or (B) they just accept this as my therapy.
Trollhattan
@? Martin:
Ours is by Miele. In addition to what you describe, it has a build in waterheater, not the typical oven coil on the bottom, and a water softener. It uses a miniscule amount of water and detergent, and rather than baking the dishes dry relies on redidual heat and an exhaust fan. And wow, is it ever quiet.
ruviana
@Certified Mutant Enemy: It doesn’t take much either. I put an empty, rinsed-out dish detergent bottle in the dishwasher to the same effect. Helped get the kitchen floor nice and clean though.
Yutsano
@shortstop: I had a friend just sell her house in 52 hours with a cash offer right about her list price. Iz our housing market improving?
jl
@Trollhattan:
” Warning, especially if you’re the curious sort, while there’s a loading door interlock, there’s also a (concealed) manual lock opener in case you HAVE to get it open. You will use it at some point, just because. A detergent-water slurry is actually a pretty good floor cleaner.
Axe me how I know. ”
Damn straight ‘just because’.
Thanks, This info will by very helpful in some future household disaster that I stumble into.
Amir Khalid
@dedc79:
Damn, that koala looks absolutely devastated.
Soonergrunt
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: That was fucking awesome!
raven
Yall’s some funny motherfuckers.
gogol's wife
@joel hanes:
I think it’s something beyond what Betty fears. I keep thinking it’s going to cause a flood even if I don’t open the door. Granted, we have a 20+-year-old dishwasher that makes an awful racket when it operates.
Redshirt
Koala update! That koala quickly got picked up and transported to a new forest.
Question though: Where did the koala go such that he missed the absolute destruction of his little patch of woods?
raven
@Redshirt: I saw some shit on tv about rinsing vs not rinsing and they said if they plates are rinsed off they wear out faster. I can’t go for that noooo
raven
Rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher can do more harm than good.
Today’s advanced detergents are designed to attack food particles left on dishes. “If there isn’t food soil, they tend to attack glasses,” says Edwards. “Some glasses are more susceptible to this kind of attacking than others.”
gogol's wife
@Southern Beale:
I cried through that whole video.
Jebediah
As always, I love the illustration.
canuckistani
We had a GE dishwasher that spontaneously caught on fire one day. It wasn’t running or anything. Fortunately, we were sitting in the kitchen when it happened and got the fire department in before the flames had escaped the box.
We have no idea what happened, but I’m guessing the wires got damaged by careless installation, or mice.
And GE sure are weaselly evasive bastards when they sense liability. We decided that the payout wasn’t going to match the lawyers it took and just threw the fucking thing out.
raven
@Southern Beale: YES!!!!!!
jl
@raven:
I don’t understand that. Seems to me that unless glassware was totally covered in dirt and grease, at least some part would get etched every time they were washed.
Stupid dishwashers. More trouble than they’re worth. Now I have to grease up glassware before they go in the dishwasher? Or I have to buy some fancy gizmo to calibrate the amount of detergent?
I’ll tell you why I hate them damn dishwashers. Once, back when I had room mates, we agreed that the damn dishwasher was more trouble that it was worth. So it was thoroughly cleaned and dried, and closed down, and the door was shut and stuff was not to be put in. And for awhile I checked it and rinsed it out periodically.
And then I forgot about it. And then somebody, I don’t know who, put some wet gooey dirty dishes and eating tools in the damn thing, and they sat there for an undetermined number of… I don’t know how long. What a stinky mess to clean up that was.
Jebediah
@gogol’s wife:
Not me. I just had something in my eye. And apparently the other one, too.
Fucking awesome video and amazing training! I understand some of the basic, general principles of dog training, but developing complicated behavior like that blows me away.
raven
@jl:
It’s always something
r r danna
Poopyman
@Jebediah: Oh yeah. One of my stepmother’s moves that was pretty much the straw on the camel’s back that she had dementia. That and sticking all of the pans in the oven – found by us kids while preheating in prep for a holiday meal.
raven
@Jebediah: The 40yd backpedal is something to behold!
Certified Mutant Enemy
@dedc79:
That’s the cover of the next issue of National Review…
jl
@raven:
Grandma! Is that you? I thought you were done passed.
It’s always some [damned] thing. Once damn thing after another. No rest for the wicked. Get crackin’, we’ll all be lying down soon enough, believe you me. You darned kids, today, you don’t know what work is!
Gravenstone
@RobertB: Made that mistake once. My first apartment and first exposure to a dishwasher. Didn’t have quite enough detergent for the load, so I topped the dispenser up with Dawn. Fortunately, the kitchen floor also needed mopping …
Trollhattan
@jl:
Noticed our glassware getting etched and found using less detergent and running the coolest setting slowed it down a lot. Maybe the theory is the detergent expends itself on food, grease, etc. and becomes less caustic as the wash cycle goes on? I dunno. Also dunno exactly what rinse aid does–break up surface tension? Isn’t that what soap does?
Box of mystery remains mysterious.
Bestest bachelor kitched I ever saw had two dishwashers. He used dishes from the clean side and loaded them into the dirty side, running it when it became full and the other had emptied. Both brilliant and slothful.
Morzer
@Wag:
I think the difference is the liberal capacity for thinking beyond the short-term, but I’ll admit laughing at oneself has a pretty good case too.
Betty Cracker
@Jebediah: Did you ever read “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle”? It was (very) loosely based on “Hamlet,” only instead of the Danish royal family, it was about a family that trained dogs to make decisions. I wish my dogs were trained like that. Hell, I wish my dogs wouldn’t yank my arm out of its socket every time they see a damn squirrel!
jibeaux
I just want the people in my house to USE the dishwasher. They seem to think the counter above the dishwasher washes the dishes. It’s a real “final mile” problem, in which I do the final mile.
I am not afraid of mine, although it is a little loud. I always run it on the “light wash” cycle because it’s 86 freaking minutes long. I don’t know how long it thinks you need to actually clean the dishes properly, 3 hours?
Morzer
@Trollhattan:
All great inventions further sloth. Inventions that do not do so are not great, by definition.
Trollhattan
@Morzer:
I demand a tshirt of this. Preferably with added Tunch.
chopper
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
nobody else remembers the time our esteemed blog host made that same mistake to hilarious results? shit, I’ve been here too long.
raven
@jl: Roseanne Roseannadanna! It just goes to show you. . .
Olivia
That must be why my cheapo brother in law would never let my sister in law use the dishwasher. He said it used too much water and didn’t believe the water usage info in the manual. It never occurred to me that he probably thought it filled all the way up.
ruemara
Now that the ex is staying here, his inability to stack dishes in the dishwasher is driving home the certainty that he needs to hurry up and go where ever. Arrogant, sulky, unemployed, stubborn as hell but really, leaving dishes on the side of the sink for hours after use and inability to stack things properly in the washer are driving me up the wall.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
My wife unplugs the toaster when it’s not being used, because, somehow, it might turn on automatically.
Shana
@replicnt6: And I thought that all the groups I heard on the radio were actually down at the radio station playing their songs.
MattR
@NonyNony: Internet? I learned that from an episode of the Brady Bunch.
Gravenstone
@Poopyman: My mother and I watched her mother put a plate of food into the toaster oven to warm it. The plate in question was styrofoam. We made sure that toaster oven disappeared quickly and quietly before there could be any unobserved repeat performances.
raven
Worried about Roundup? Call in a flamethrower for those pesky weeds!
“FLAME weeds in your yard, garden, concrete cracks, rock gardens, driveways and along fence lines. Perfect along chainlink fences! Flaming reduces or eliminates spraying chemicals and is a lot more fun than pulling weeds!”
Eric U.
nothing is real
eta: everything is permitted
Tonal Crow
@Redshirt:
Modern dishwashers use only ~4-5 gallons of water per load. It’s ridiculously easy to use that hand-washing only a few plates if you aren’t paying attention and taking your time. Dishwashers do use ~ 0.5 kWh per load, but it’s easy to use that amount of energy heating the water for hand washing.
Morzer
@Trollhattan:
Right now I am fixing to invent a way to have someone else make t-shirts and put pictures of Tunch on them. After my afternoon nap, that is.
gogol's wife
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I do that too! I attribute it to having a mother who lived through the Depression. There must have been some horrible toaster incidents in the early days. I have some vague memory that some child was killed by a rampant toaster, so you always have to unplug the toaster when you’re not using it. I know it’s irrational, but I check it every time I leave the house.
I felt vindicated when Carson on Downton Abbey thought the house was on fire because of Mrs. Hughes’s newfangled toaster.
I guess I’m exposing my deepest fears here today.
Randy P
I could laugh at you but I had an “I Love Lucy” moment with a dishwasher myself. We were out of the dishwasher liquid so I figured, what the heck, why not use the stuff we use to wash dishes by hand?
Turns out that stuff is designed to make lots of bubbles. Which seeped out from around the dishwasher door and filled the floor of the kitchen.
My wife was greatly amused. Still is, years later. And I was too, actually. It was pretty funny and literally straight out of a sitcom.
Where do you learn stuff like “all dish soap is not equal”? Her basic reaction was “of course” but I don’t see why that should have been so obvious.
Amir Khalid
@raven:
It’s very easy to imagine someone accidentally “flaming” their house. Does the Red Dragon Propane Torch Kit come with a booklet of convincing explanations to give to your local FD?
Central Planning
@raven:
I have a flame-thrower type thing attached to a propane tank. It is fun.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Randy P: It’s “common sense” which I take these days to mean “somebody told me but obviously not you.”
raven
@Amir Khalid: We’ve been worried about roundup and someone in the garden club sent this along with a link to Garden Grade Vinegar. $41 a gallon and she said to use twice as much as the instructions called for!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Southern Beale: The difference between urban and rural in those days was tremendous. My mother, aunt, and uncle (aunt’s husband) all remember when their childhood houses got electricity in central KY in the early-mid 1940s. My father, however, from NYC, never knew a home without electric, and he was born in 1914. I’m not surprised in TN that lots of pre-1947 houses were not pre-wired.
@raven: I’ve used regular grade vinegar – copiously, with (some) success. The key was to use it on a blisteringly sunny day.
Poopyman
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): No, because it could catch fire spontaneously, as my sister’s did. Also too, the manual (allegedly – who reads those things anyway?) says to keep it unplugged while not in use.
So since my toaster is sitting downstairs plugged in like a firebomb ready to go off, don’t be surprised if you suddenly don’t hear from me anymore.
Betty Cracker
@Central Planning: I had a roommate in college who used to kill the many cockroaches in our dorm room by lighting a stream of hairspray from an aerosol can and using that to torch the roaches. Then she recorded her “kills” on the wall by drawing a little roach silhouette with a Sharpie in the approximate dimensions of the victim. Best. Roommate. Ever.
Morzer
@Central Planning:
I find that the best way to reduce growth in the garden is to install a Republicanized Austerity Congress Critters On Our Nursery (RACCOON) multi-phase weapons system in the vegetable patch. There will be absolutely no weeds or other subversive plant jihadis in evidence.
Admittedly, there won’t be any vegetables either, but that’s the price we must pay for patriotic vegetation safety.
lol
@NonyNony:
My girlfriend did this because we ran out of dish washing machine liquid. Kitchen flooded with bubbles. I helped clean the floor, wash the machine of bubbles, etc.
She starts it up and it floods again because she half-assed cleaning the soap out of the dispenser. I help clean, etc.
I had to go somewhere and I said I’d get proper detergent on my way home. While I was gone, she got tired of waiting and went to the store herself, bought the wrong kind, used it in the machine and flooded the kitchen for the third time that night.
The kitchen floors have never matched the cleanliness they had that night.
Jebediah
@raven:
Yeah – if I could do it that stylishly, I would be Christopher Walken.
Randy P
OK I see I’m not the only one to make the dish soap mistake.
As for “never do it”? I dunno. Maybe do it once. It’s pretty impressive. Might want to schedule it when there are no wives arounnd though.
Bill Arnold
@canuckistani:
Ouch. Our GE dishwasher recently had a recall (many different models were involved) due to fire risk having something to due with the heater element, and a mod was done by a service person who showed up on time and did the work within an hour. The recall instructions said to not use the dishwasher until the service was done, and to turn off the power at the breaker box if possible. This was sometime in the jan/feb 2013 I believe.
Only knew about it because my father gets Consumer Reports and happened to read a short list of recalls and he gets worked up about anything fire related. (We had a house fire when I was growing up.)
pat
Speaking of torches, and other accidents etc,
As I was driving home today I passed a house where a burnt out hulk of a motorcycle was being loaded onto a flatbed trailer, in front of a garage with a melted and singed exterior…. Lucky the bike wasn’t IN the garage at the time.
Jebediah
@Betty Cracker:
I’ll have to grab that. I think Juno is starting to think of herself as ten pounds of royalty, and is deciding to start trying to train me. Luckily, I am a slow learner.
As for arms and sockets – several years ago we were walking our pups and and an older lady was walking a yellow lab who decided he REALLY had to get at our dogs (to play – he wasn’t being aggressive) and pulled so hard the poor lady was horizontal in the air. It would have been sort of cartoon-funny if she hadn’t badly broken her arm when she hit the ground. I grabbed the dog and held him until her family got there – the poor pup was shaking. (His name was Reptar, and I think he is the only dog named Reptar I have ever met.)
RSA
That’s flat-out unpossible. You might as well try to tell me that the light in the refrigerator goes out when I close the door.
Jebediah
@Poopyman:
I hope nobody just reached and grabbed them with bare hands. Heat is hot and can burn you if you aren’t careful.
NotMax
Speaking about dishwashers, one can cook in them while cleaning the dishes and utensils, too. Although the guy in the linked video doesn’t use butter and herbs, which makes it even tastier.
Oh, and run the full Normal Cycle, including Dry. Economy will undercook it, Cool Dry will undercook it, Pots & Pans cycle will overcook it.
Schlemizel
@Southern Beale:
I grew up in a house that had gas lamps. most had been capped off but not all of them & mom was always warning us to not touch them so one night while they were out I turned one on & lit it. It worked as advertised but stunk.
The house was wired with ‘knob and tube’ wiring which means bare wires & porcelain insulators. about 1967 the wires sagged & touched setting fire to the house. No real damage except to anythng plugged in at the time which didn’t handle 220 too well!
Schlemizel
@Southern Beale:
I grew up in a house that had gas lamps. most had been capped off but not all of them & mom was always warning us to not touch them so one night while they were out I turned one on & lit it. It worked as advertised but stunk.
The house was wired with ‘knob and tube’ wiring which means bare wires & porcelain insulators. about 1967 the wires sagged & touched setting fire to the house. No real damage except to anythng plugged in at the time which didn’t handle 220 too well!
? Martin
@Southern Beale:
You should be doing dishes every other day – or every day. Keeps the bacteria from building colonies in your house.
That’s actually a benefit of small dishwashers – you can run a load more often, rather than waiting for it to be full. Then again, I’ve got a pair of indentured servants to fill and empty mine…
Davis X. Machina
I’ve got a dishwasher, and in 14 years have never run the dryer cycle — you can turn it off on the front panel.
I’m not sure how much electricity it saves, but the dishes used to sit in the rack next to the sink in the pre-dishwasher days, and it didn’t do them any harm….
Schlemizel
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
That actually has happened. It very rare but I was a firefighter for a while & we got reports of house fires started by toasters, not in my city but around the country.
Betty Cracker
@Jebediah: Do pick it up — highly recommended! Oh, and that poor lady with Reptar the Lab! Cool name, but bad, bad doggie to break that lady’s arm! I’m sure he felt terrible about it, though. Labs remind me of my little brother: goofy and well-meaning, but frequently destructive.
Calouste
@? Martin:
American domestic appliances are stuck in the 1950s. So far behind European and Asian products in design and efficiency it’s just not funny.
Shortstop
@Yutsano: For reasons not worth getting into here, it’s improving more slowly in Chicago than in most of the rest of the country. But inventory is super low in our neighborhood right now, leading us to try listing before we’d intended to. It paid off — I think we caught lightning in a bottle. Whew!
On to a professionally managed building…so long, lazy-ass neighbors who think a few of us should be your personal slaves and do all the work of the association! Since one of them has been trying to sell for eight months with no bites, this is particularly sweet!
EthylEster
This story reminds of when JC confessed to using regular dish washing liquid in his dishwasher. At least your misunderstanding led only to this confession. IIRC his produced a kitchen disaster (not to mention hilarity here).
I see chopper beat me to it!
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Used to hunt basement spiders with matches and Lysol spray. How did my parents’ house survive three of us?
MaryRC
I can’t wait for Jack Donaghy to come out with the glass-fronted dishwasher. Then you’d know if it was safe to open the door, plus my cat would watch it for hours.
Davis X. Machina
Black Lab, yellow Lab, or meth Lab?
Schlemizel
@canuckistani:
interesting. our GE dish washer melted a hole through the bottom with his drying element. Maybe I should sue
Schlemizel
@canuckistani:
interesting. our GE dish washer melted a hole through the bottom with his drying element. Maybe I should sue
Schlemizel
@? Martin:
Having lived in that toilet with palm trees known as Florida we got in the habit of washing after every meal. any sort of left over allowed to sit is an invitation for roaches to move in & never leave
Schlemizel
@Davis X. Machina:
We use ‘air dry’ a bit, less than half the time. We particularly like it in the winter when pulling the drawers out & allowing the things to dry adds humidity to the dry air
elmo
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
You laugh, but a firefighter buddy of mine insisted that I do this with my toaster oven AND coffeepot. Apparently there is a nonzero number of fires that have started through shorts in the damn things, but I’m blessed if I understand how.
Schlemizel
I can always tell when I missed the new thread!
elmo
@Schlemizel:
Ha! I commented before I saw yours; I wonder if this is a firefighter urban legend, tho?
Betty Cracker
@Schlemizel: You can wash after every meal and scrub your house from ceiling to floor every day, and giant, flying indestructible cockroaches will still occasionally turn up.
Shortstop
@elmo: our beloved handyman says to unplug any electrical appliance with a heating element when not in use. Sounded reasonable to me so I started doing it.
Trollhattan
@MaryRC:
Front-loading clothes washer can be better than television sometimes. Low bar, but still….
Keith G
Soooo why would there be more water in the washer than the reservoir at the bottom can hold?
In all my years, I have never seen that issue.
NotMax
@elmo
Several years ago, had to replace the toaster. Only model I could find locally which had slots long and wide enough handle a variety of items, and a price that didn’t induce sticker shock, has a light that comes on to show it is plugged in (stupid, useless feature).
So it gets unplugged when that last slice pops up.
Living with a kitchen which has roughly four square feet of counter space means no appliance gets permanent squatting rights, so it would be unplugged regardless.
But I’m somewhat of an electricity miser anyway. Though the microwave (sits on a portable cabinet opposite the counter area) stays plugged in, the clock is switched off.
Jebediah
@Davis X. Machina:
I think I resemble that dog…
fleeting expletive
I quit using my dishwasher 5 years ago. I’m renting a little house, the dishwasher is probably forty years old and is very loud, and takes about an hour to run. I really do appreciate its utility as storage space for platters and my crockpot.
Schlemizel
@elmo:
I don’t think so. I used to read a firefighters magazine that had recaps of recent trends in fires and in arson. They listed specific fire cases and what caused them. but urban legend is always a thing with those boys. Most of them were good guys but not always the brightest bunch.
But then think about what it takes to run TOWARDS what everyone in their right mind is running AWAY from!
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
My favorite are the kamakazi cockroaches! Palmetto bugs fly right for you when they see you
NotMax
@Schlemizel
Just because.
World’s Biggest Cockroaches
Certainly have seen some here in Hawaii that, if they used the roads, would be required to have gross vehicle weight labeling.
Schlemizel
@NotMax:
Yeah, Palmettos are not that large but they do reach 4 inches. Those hissing things are in another class.
Still, its the Brown & German that are the nasty ones. Get them and you may never be rid of them again
Maude
@NotMax:
I unplug the coffee maker right after it finishes. anything with a heating element can catch fire.
Same with the toaster.
gogol's wife
@Maude:
I am so glad I read this thread. Now I can totally convince my husband to remember to unplug the toaster.
NotMax
@Maude
Ditto. Same reason I have a coffeemaker which has a thermal carafe and no warming plate underneath it (25-year-old Braun model).
Maude
@gogol’s wife:
Always. I do unplug things. If you have a printer and it’s off, it may still be drawing power. I unplug that as well when not in use. It uses electricity.
Maude
@NotMax:
Those are good coffee makers.
The local news stand store has gone to thermal carafes instead of the Bunn coffee pots. They still have the Bunn coffee maker. They have the best coffee. It’s not weak.
NotMax
@gogol’s wife
In some husbands that may overwrite the ‘put the toilet seat down’ command.
the fake fake al
But why can’t the dishwasher put the damned things away?
Redshirt
Add me to the “unplug toaster and coffee pot” club. It’s always been common sense to me. There’s no shame!
bemused
@Maude:
Our latest drip coffee maker is a Melitta with a thermal carafe…we like it much better than any other previous brands we used.
Maybe I missed it but surely we can’t be the only people who disgree about the correct loading of the dishwasher. My husband does it ALL WRONG.
PIGL
@ruemara: but why did you leave him?
SiubhanDuinne
@replicnt6:
When I was four, I believed that the word Beefeater was a collapsing of “bee defeater,” and I made up an entire story in my head about how England had once been invaded by swarms of bees, and the Tower Guard defeated them and that’s why the Yeomen of the Guard are called Beefeaters.
I still believed that when I was 23. No lie.
SiubhanDuinne
@canuckistani:
Thank you for the Oxford-like comma. Because otherwise, “careless mice.”
Tbone
We just bought our first dishwasher after not having one for about ten years. I’ll run that damn thing with one dish in it. Just too bad we had to pay for an entire kitchen remodel to get it.
Jebediah
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wanted it to be careless mice.
canuckistani
@SiubhanDuinne:
Careless mice is an even better explanation. Damn you, Oxford comma!