Best advice from TC: verify the water is hot before starting the dishwasher. Especially if your water heater is located a ways from your kitchen and the pipes aren't well insulated.
Cold water only connection for all dishwashers I've seen in New Zealand. Dishwashers have an internal heating element.
Are modern US dishwashers plumbed into hot water?
NZ has 240 Volts (10 Amp 2400 Watt appliances are normal - anything above that needs special wiring). And NZ environmental regulations might be involved too (modern washing machines can be crappy because they try to skimp on water usage - our regulations can be overkill).
For me, moving away from pods to a dishwasher liquid (cascade 3x from Costco) made the most difference. I add some liquid in the prewash and some in the main compartment. I had to figure out the right amount to add in each via trial and error. I don't pre rinse or run the hot water beforehand, my dishes come out clean.
I wonder how much this really matters. For me my dishwasher is far enough from the hot water heater that it generally takes several gallons for the water to run hot. But the wash cycle is 2+ hours long and uses very minimal water (~3 gallons/cycle). Even if I preheated the lines using the tap near the washer, it wouldnt even be lukewarm by the end of the wash cycle.
Not sure why you were downvoted. This sounds like absolutely crucial advice for people in countries where dishwashers don't heat the water on their own. I've never seen one like that in my life, but yeah, sounds important.
I feel like the two types of dishwasher people are clearly delineated by those who have and have not watched the Technology Connections videos on dishwashers.
1. Powdered detergent people who sprinkle some soap in for the prewash
2. Tab people who attest that they need to pre-rinse their dishes before they put them in the dishwasher
I've seen the video and tried switching from pods (which I assume is the same thing as a tab, just never heard that name before) to powder with some power in the prewash compartment without prerinsing the dishes.
Other's results may vary, but I found my dishwasher would eventually get clogged with the TC approach, even though I clean the filter regularly and wasn't putting in dishes with absurd amounts of food still on them. Since I switched back to pods and prerinsing, the clogging went away. Maybe my dishwasher or the install has something goofy about it, but it was definitely a failed experiment for me. Although I still think the TC argument is a solid one in theory.
Dishwasher companies have tried for a long time to get people to stop pre-washing their dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I remember ads from the 80s or 90s with people putting full cakes, or a baked on lasagna pan into the dishwasher and it coming out clean.
Almost everyone I know still does excessive rinsing in the sink first. I have never done this and it’s always been fine.
I learned some things from the TC videos, but it was more about refining things, it didn’t drastically change what I was already doing.
I’m a Bosch dishwasher powder soap with some in the bottom for presoak but still pre-rinse type person. Clean the filter once a month (takes 2 minutes literally) use jet dry (or equivalent) and I have zero complaints about how my 20 year old dishwasher performs!
You know, the hot water tip is great, but cleaning the filter is really the best thing I’ve found to keeping it working well. Residue always seems to indicate a dirty filter.
I think it depends on the kind of residue. If we're just talking about caked-on stuff that you recognize that didn't wash off, I'd start with hot water and adding the pre-wash powder. But if you get stuff on your dishes that you don't recognize... yeah, that's a filter.
I once stayed with family at a vacation rental where the dishwasher left things worse than we put them in—a thick gray residue plastered over everything. We were going to be there for a week with 30 people, which meant we had a lot of dishwashing to do, but by the time I became aware of it the rest of the family had already given up on it and had started washing dishes by hand.
I took one look at the output and knew immediately what was wrong thanks to TC. An hour later (it was that bad) the dishwasher was working flawlessly and we saved hours in dishwashing time over the week.
(We also told the rental owners that their cleaners weren't taking care of the dishwasher. I didn't ask for them to pay me for the time, but I probably should have!)
I used to be uptight about how to load the dishwater until I put away a load that was packed by my partner, "like a raccoon on meth", and noticed there wasn't a difference in the cleanliness.
Now I just worry about buying new bowls. Will the bowls fit nicely given pitch and angle of the of the dealies on the rack? The bowls I inherited from my grandmother fit so nicely in any dishwasher I've loaded them into, but now they're starting to crack...
Some things won't matter, some will. I think it's changed over time as dishwashers and detergents got better.
The article mentions that newer detergents do better with unrinsed dishes. And I remember a commercial about a dishwasher that could eat a cake. My old model sure couldn't do that! If I wasn't careful I'd find hunks of food sitting inside after it ran. It also used to be that putting thin tupperware on the bottom rack was a sure way to melt it. Now I can't remember the last time that happened to me.
Things that used to provably matter... now don't.
On the other hand, I have a family member who loads the spoons in a big pile, and they stick together and don't get clean. Or, I had roommates who kept putting my good knives in the dishwasher, and the finish got ruined. That stuff still matters.
I like the article's conclusion: we can just get the answers, and update our knowledge. We don't have to treat this like a pre-internet argument, where we just went in circles repeating heresay.
When I was cleaning my dishwasher I realized there are two ways to configure it: with a in-sink garbage disposal, and without. If you don't have the garbage disposal part hooked up there is simply nowhere for the chunks to go and they accumulate at the bottom of the washer beneath a filter.
> I used to be uptight about how to load the dishwater until I put away a load that was packed by my partner, "like a raccoon on meth", and noticed there wasn't a difference in the cleanliness.
My partner loads the dishwasher like a raccoon on meth. I do it like a software engineer who's been thinking about The One True Way To Organize Things for decades.
Cleanliness is fine either way. But I really hate that she can't fit a full day's worth of dishes in there so I have to do an extra load later.
On the other side of this argument, I've seen "just run the dishwasher twice" used as shorthand for giving yourself permission to do whatever is needed to get the job done and not letting perfectionism paralyze you from making progress.
This blog excerpt explains the idea [1]:
> Knowing this week was going to be a lot, I’ve been living by “run the dishwasher twice”. What the hell does that even mean?! Essentially it means to do whatever is the path of least resistance to get shit done. The advice came from a therapist to a woman who was feeling very low & was struggling with everyday tasks such as doing the dishes. She didn’t have the mental capacity to scrub dishes before putting them in her crappy dishwasher so she wasn’t doing them & they were building up & causing her more anxiety. Her therapist said not to rinse the dishes & just run the dishwasher twice, even three times if that’s what it took to get them clean. It was a game-changer for her, one that enabled her to do a small task in an imperfect way just to get it done.
I wish the OP article had dug a little bit deeper into the psychology behind daily task conflict in relationships. The dishwasher is one of many microcosms (laundry, car, pets, etc) that I wish I'd paid more attention to in my relationships, because these conversations really do reveal relationship dynamics around HUGE issues like compromise, empathy, perfectionism, and judgmental behavior.
That's the real difference. I'm playing Tetris, and getting an amazing score. She's leaving a bunch of stuff on the side for the next cycle, or hand washing them.
What I notice is that the dishes and glasses don't chip when I put them in and I do when anyone else does. Don't matter if there are more clean dishes per load if they're broken, people.
You are thinking like someone who buys the dishes, rather than someone who wants the person who buys the dishes to get off their case about it so they can do something more interesting.
Similarly, I used to stress about loading the dishwasher when I was a teen. I would spend so much time loading it that I have myself a neck ache from leaning over and I could have saved time by washing the dishes by hand.
I still try to be somewhat efficient about loading the dishwasher, but… if I notice myself stressing I just say “screw it”, run it, and wash the rest by hand.
The other thing I’ve realized is that sometimes things don’t get clean if you load them properly. For example, tall glasses that had smoothies in them. It’s a little gross if you don’t notice it until you’re about to use it, but… you can just look at them and wash them by hand when you unload the dishwasher.
I guess this is all to say that sometimes the best optimization is to not think about it too much.
IMHO the main advantage of neatly loading dishes neatly is that unloading becomes a 60 second exercise as opposed to a 5 minute one. It's not so much that I don't have 5 minutes to spare, but my back appreciates it if I can get it done quicker. I get 4 plates with each hand, silverware is already sorted neatly... it's just overall a better experience.
In other words, even if you believe the time taken to sort is identical whether you do it loading or unloading, the difference is if you do it while loading you divide that task into many smaller tasks instead of doing one big sorting task on unloading.
I view it as an area where diminishing returns are almost as soon as you get started. Using a dish washer is already getting a TON of work done for me that I would otherwise have to do. Trying to squeeze any extra from it is kind of silly. I'll always have to run it some more tomorrow.
In one of my jobs (civil service) I had to pack and unpack a cheap dish washer, for a horde of unruly kids each day.
If you pack it orderly unpacking is a lot faster. It also helps to avoid problems with leftovers blocking the dish washer. Turns out most dish washer manufacturers thought a bit about how to load a dishwasher ideally (that matches the layout of the machines insides).
For home use with small amounts of dishes it won't really matter tho.
>and noticed there wasn't a difference in the cleanliness.
If they screw it up good enough there is a difference because the water streams can't get where they need to to get everything sufficiently cleaned and rinsed.
Not often so I learn a new 5 letter word. I have the same issue with trying to get rid of the fiestaware from my childhood home my mom gave me when I graduated college. It just fits right.
The author evaluated their position, measured the situation, sought more information, adjusted their position, independently tested it and updated their position
Scientific method 101
They did it with intentional vulnerability, and took responsibility for themselves at the outset.
We need more of this and it’s rare to actually see someone document it. It requires the ability to be wrong, something that seems to be going extinct …curiously despite it being almost universally accepted as a virtue.
> Last week, I purposefully subjected myself to the real-life version of an anxiety dream. I stood in front of my boyfriend and my parents—three of the people who mean the most to me, and who have offered the most, uh, feedback on my dishwasher-loading abilities—and tried to do the thing. Plates on the bottom, don’t cram too much in there, think about the spray: Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I thought about the hard work, and the help, required to keep a home. The dishes came out clean.
I had a much less rigorous version of this in mind after reading the article but this is exactly what I enjoyed about it. I think you're right that this isn't frequently documented and maybe if it was such responses to problems would be more common.
I'm surprised this Jon Richardson bit hasn't been posted already. It's an incredible piece of comedy, even moreso given that it's about loading the dishwasher.
This makes zero sense. Are you considering the machine time or just loading? Also, machines wash 1000 times better than hand ever could, uses less water, and doesn’t dry out your hands.
The time the dishwasher takes to wash the dishes is time you yourself can use for literally anything else. Not to mention the savings on the water bill and the much higher quality of the wash. The only objection I can think of is if you do not have enough dishes, which means the dishwasher "locks in" the dishes for some time, but the real solution to that is to simply get extra dishes so that you have some to use while the dishwasher is running – seriously, it will pay for itself in no time.
Hah, we have a habit of using them as a drying rack after handwashing too. With the lower rack pulled out and resting on the open door, so air circulates well and things dry pretty fast.
Eventually, you think about running the washer just to clean itself. But, you wonder if the thing will surprise you with leaks if you do run it, because it has been months or more and who knows if the seals are working...
The handle is typically loaded so that it weighs a lot more than the blade, which means they're likely fall out of the basket if they're blade down.
Also: blade down, you can't tell which ones are the knives unless you only do knives blade down (but forks and spoons handle down), which seems even more insanity to me..!!
It's easy to cut yourself emptying the dishwasher if knives are point up, but since you're in the kitchen which can have slippery floors and there's usually an open door low to the ground and a lot of moving back and forth there's also a small risk of slipping/tripping and falling onto the knives final destination style and impaling yourself on them. Ideally pointy things point down and spoons go up.
Dishwasher utensil baskets have compartments tall and narrow enough that the knife is not going to fall out. I haven't had that happen ever in my life. Even with heavy handles. (If it's as large as a chef's knife, however, that lies down flat in the upper rack.)
And yes, you do only knives down. If you did spoons and forks down it would be too crowded at the bottom. I don't know why only knives down seems like insanity to you?
I mean, I'm glad you've never sliced your hand on a thin paring knife sticking up at an angle that makes the blade virtually invisible. But hey, it's your hand you're risking, not mine...
This is a mistake you only make once. Lesson learned when I put a boning knife through my arm in the dish rack one day. Cost me a trip in the ambulance. Absolute insanity– correct! I don't even know how it got in there with the rest of the utensils. But I triple check the sink area every time now.
I have a dishwasher that does this. It was in the house already, I used it for at least a month wondering why it didn't have a proper place to put cutlery before I tried cleaning the top and realized there was a drawer hidden there!
It's a great feature, but since the dishwasher has a standard height to fit under the counter, it means the bottom rack is a bit shorter than standard and I have to be very careful stacking plates to avoid blocking the washer arm. And there are a few large plates which I'm sure would fit in most washers which I have to wash by hand, like a caveman.
This is the absolute best feature any dishwasher can have. I can’t go back to having one of those awkward cutlery baskets now. Besides doing a terrible job with the cutlery, it just wastes so much space that could be used for plates and cups.
I just wash dishes by hand while I wait fo the kettle to boil for my after-food cup of tea.
It's therapeutic, takes a few minutes, and makes me conscious of how many dishes I should be using (e.g. as few as possible). If I have to pre-rinse dishes for the dishwasher, I might as well just rinse it fully then and there.
> If I have to pre-rinse dishes for the dishwasher, I might as well just rinse it fully then and there.
That's the point: you _don't_ have to. Scrape off the majority of the food, use the right amount of soap (and add some on the inside of the door for the prewash), and you'll be surprised at the results.
I write my posts with a chisel and clay tablet because it makes me conscious of how many words I should be using (e.g. as few as possible). No, writing words is cheap now, so I can use more words.
Because dishwashing has made clean dishes abundant, we should use more of them than previous generations, opening up more pleasing recipes and more courses per meal.
Readit News
Are modern US dishwashers plumbed into hot water?
NZ has 240 Volts (10 Amp 2400 Watt appliances are normal - anything above that needs special wiring). And NZ environmental regulations might be involved too (modern washing machines can be crappy because they try to skimp on water usage - our regulations can be overkill).
Are US washing machines connected to hot water as well?
1. Powdered detergent people who sprinkle some soap in for the prewash
2. Tab people who attest that they need to pre-rinse their dishes before they put them in the dishwasher
I've seen the technology connections video, continue to use pods, and continue not to pre-rinse the dishes
Other's results may vary, but I found my dishwasher would eventually get clogged with the TC approach, even though I clean the filter regularly and wasn't putting in dishes with absurd amounts of food still on them. Since I switched back to pods and prerinsing, the clogging went away. Maybe my dishwasher or the install has something goofy about it, but it was definitely a failed experiment for me. Although I still think the TC argument is a solid one in theory.
Almost everyone I know still does excessive rinsing in the sink first. I have never done this and it’s always been fine.
I learned some things from the TC videos, but it was more about refining things, it didn’t drastically change what I was already doing.
I once stayed with family at a vacation rental where the dishwasher left things worse than we put them in—a thick gray residue plastered over everything. We were going to be there for a week with 30 people, which meant we had a lot of dishwashing to do, but by the time I became aware of it the rest of the family had already given up on it and had started washing dishes by hand.
I took one look at the output and knew immediately what was wrong thanks to TC. An hour later (it was that bad) the dishwasher was working flawlessly and we saved hours in dishwashing time over the week.
(We also told the rental owners that their cleaners weren't taking care of the dishwasher. I didn't ask for them to pay me for the time, but I probably should have!)
Now I just worry about buying new bowls. Will the bowls fit nicely given pitch and angle of the of the dealies on the rack? The bowls I inherited from my grandmother fit so nicely in any dishwasher I've loaded them into, but now they're starting to crack...
The article mentions that newer detergents do better with unrinsed dishes. And I remember a commercial about a dishwasher that could eat a cake. My old model sure couldn't do that! If I wasn't careful I'd find hunks of food sitting inside after it ran. It also used to be that putting thin tupperware on the bottom rack was a sure way to melt it. Now I can't remember the last time that happened to me.
Things that used to provably matter... now don't.
On the other hand, I have a family member who loads the spoons in a big pile, and they stick together and don't get clean. Or, I had roommates who kept putting my good knives in the dishwasher, and the finish got ruined. That stuff still matters.
I like the article's conclusion: we can just get the answers, and update our knowledge. We don't have to treat this like a pre-internet argument, where we just went in circles repeating heresay.
My partner loads the dishwasher like a raccoon on meth. I do it like a software engineer who's been thinking about The One True Way To Organize Things for decades.
Cleanliness is fine either way. But I really hate that she can't fit a full day's worth of dishes in there so I have to do an extra load later.
This blog excerpt explains the idea [1]:
> Knowing this week was going to be a lot, I’ve been living by “run the dishwasher twice”. What the hell does that even mean?! Essentially it means to do whatever is the path of least resistance to get shit done. The advice came from a therapist to a woman who was feeling very low & was struggling with everyday tasks such as doing the dishes. She didn’t have the mental capacity to scrub dishes before putting them in her crappy dishwasher so she wasn’t doing them & they were building up & causing her more anxiety. Her therapist said not to rinse the dishes & just run the dishwasher twice, even three times if that’s what it took to get them clean. It was a game-changer for her, one that enabled her to do a small task in an imperfect way just to get it done.
I wish the OP article had dug a little bit deeper into the psychology behind daily task conflict in relationships. The dishwasher is one of many microcosms (laundry, car, pets, etc) that I wish I'd paid more attention to in my relationships, because these conversations really do reveal relationship dynamics around HUGE issues like compromise, empathy, perfectionism, and judgmental behavior.
[1] https://thebackfenceblog.wordpress.com/2021/08/27/run-the-di...
I still try to be somewhat efficient about loading the dishwasher, but… if I notice myself stressing I just say “screw it”, run it, and wash the rest by hand.
The other thing I’ve realized is that sometimes things don’t get clean if you load them properly. For example, tall glasses that had smoothies in them. It’s a little gross if you don’t notice it until you’re about to use it, but… you can just look at them and wash them by hand when you unload the dishwasher.
I guess this is all to say that sometimes the best optimization is to not think about it too much.
In other words, even if you believe the time taken to sort is identical whether you do it loading or unloading, the difference is if you do it while loading you divide that task into many smaller tasks instead of doing one big sorting task on unloading.
I inherited a dishwasher and became more uptight after:
- dishes that left the soap partially unused
- wet dishes
- melted stuff
- stuff that blocked the upper rotating thingie
- stuff that fell into the heating element and bottom rotating thingie
maybe seeking a racoon-friendly dishwasher would be a relationship saver.
If you pack it orderly unpacking is a lot faster. It also helps to avoid problems with leftovers blocking the dish washer. Turns out most dish washer manufacturers thought a bit about how to load a dishwasher ideally (that matches the layout of the machines insides).
For home use with small amounts of dishes it won't really matter tho.
If they screw it up good enough there is a difference because the water streams can't get where they need to to get everything sufficiently cleaned and rinsed.
Not often so I learn a new 5 letter word. I have the same issue with trying to get rid of the fiestaware from my childhood home my mom gave me when I graduated college. It just fits right.
Scientific method 101
They did it with intentional vulnerability, and took responsibility for themselves at the outset.
We need more of this and it’s rare to actually see someone document it. It requires the ability to be wrong, something that seems to be going extinct …curiously despite it being almost universally accepted as a virtue.
> Last week, I purposefully subjected myself to the real-life version of an anxiety dream. I stood in front of my boyfriend and my parents—three of the people who mean the most to me, and who have offered the most, uh, feedback on my dishwasher-loading abilities—and tried to do the thing. Plates on the bottom, don’t cram too much in there, think about the spray: Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I thought about the hard work, and the help, required to keep a home. The dishes came out clean.
Dead Comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ymh8o6GI_g
Also, I’ve worked as a dishwasher and don’t want to do more of that ever.
Eventually, you think about running the washer just to clean itself. But, you wonder if the thing will surprise you with leaks if you do run it, because it has been months or more and who knows if the seals are working...
The handle is typically loaded so that it weighs a lot more than the blade, which means they're likely fall out of the basket if they're blade down.
Also: blade down, you can't tell which ones are the knives unless you only do knives blade down (but forks and spoons handle down), which seems even more insanity to me..!!
And yes, you do only knives down. If you did spoons and forks down it would be too crowded at the bottom. I don't know why only knives down seems like insanity to you?
I mean, I'm glad you've never sliced your hand on a thin paring knife sticking up at an angle that makes the blade virtually invisible. But hey, it's your hand you're risking, not mine...
It's a great feature, but since the dishwasher has a standard height to fit under the counter, it means the bottom rack is a bit shorter than standard and I have to be very careful stacking plates to avoid blocking the washer arm. And there are a few large plates which I'm sure would fit in most washers which I have to wash by hand, like a caveman.
On balance it's a good feature though.
It's therapeutic, takes a few minutes, and makes me conscious of how many dishes I should be using (e.g. as few as possible). If I have to pre-rinse dishes for the dishwasher, I might as well just rinse it fully then and there.
That's the point: you _don't_ have to. Scrape off the majority of the food, use the right amount of soap (and add some on the inside of the door for the prewash), and you'll be surprised at the results.
Because dishwashing has made clean dishes abundant, we should use more of them than previous generations, opening up more pleasing recipes and more courses per meal.