An Ode to the Dishwasher
August 24, 2011, By Michael O. Varhola 0 comments
Under normal circumstances, I'm really not even allowed to use the dishwasher. Sure, after mealtimes my wife likes me to thoroughly wash my dishes and then, once they are nice and clean, put them into the dishwasher, but she ultimately rearranges them to her satisfaction and makes the executive decision of when to run it. So when she's on the road and keeping the kitchen hygienic becomes my responsibility, I need to rediscover this wonderful piece of equipment.
I'm probably not as conscientious as she is when it comes to keeping the kitchen squared away, and, uncannily, she usually has been gone exactly 24 hours when I notice that it looks like a pack of raccoons has been squatting in it. Every bit of sink and counter space is packed with dirty dishes, including more pans than I can remember using, crusty cat dishes, both cutting boards and a scattered array of cutlery.
If my wife were to walk in on this deplorable scene, it would be met with expressions of angst and a prolonged and conversation-laden period of cleaning, all of which is inexplicable to me. I just jam it all in the dishwasher, load a soap tablet and run it.
When you think about it, the dishwasher is an impressively comprehensive piece of equipment in that when it has finished its work the dishes are more or less ready to put away. Compare the dishwasher to its relatively inefficient counterparts for clothes, the washer and dryer, which require two huge appliances instead of one and still demand all sorts of tedious manual labor to supplement their effects (e.g., folding the cleaned and dried laundry).
Some people want to negate the benefits of this terrific labor-saving device, believing that dishes need to be all but completely washed before being loaded into the dishwasher, but I am not buying it. I can’t see wasting time and water to do something that the machine is going to do anyway. If there is still something stuck on an item—which almost never happens—it is easy enough to scrape it off or hand-wash that item, but this tweak still takes much less time than painstakingly cleaning everything before running it through the dishwasher.
