Dishwasher or by hand

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Rene T

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Had a discussion this past weekend with my SIL about which is cheaper. Washing dishes by hand or putting them in a dishwasher.
Given is that it’s at a sticks and bricks. It’s for two people. I assume that if using the dishwasher you would have to have about 3 days of dirty dishes before you would need to wash them. Using the dw you have to rinse all the dishes before putting them in the dw using hot water. Then there’s the electricity for running the pump and a motor to spin the spray head, then the electricity to keep the water hot and the electricity to dry the dishes.

Which is cheaper? Of course a salesman selling dishwashers will tell you it would be a lot cheaper to use the dishwasher instead of by hand.
 
The problem with the scrape and load theory is you're not leaving them to dry out for 3 days before running it.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
 
You don’t have to rinse the dishes prior to putting them in the dishwasher. Just scrape the big bits into either the garbage or the disposal.
As Mark says, that's fine if you run the washer soon, but after three or four days (there's only the two of us light eaters here) some stuff dries too hard for the dishwasher to get it all off, so we rinse first.
 
Dishwasher. I don't care what it costs compared to hand-washing because the cost is ultimately minimal. My time is more valuable than that, and it's more efficient with water than I am (and does a better job).

I have this argument with my father-in-law every time I'm at his house because he won't use one. "I'm gonna buy you a dishwasher!" I keep threatening, and he growls back, "I ain't ever going to use it, you'd be wasting your money!". So I tell him I'm not buying it for HIM, I'm buying it for me, when we come visit.
 
A real bachelor eats out of the package and only uses one fork per day. A week's dishes is 7 forks and a few pint beer glasses.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
I rinse my beer glass and put it back in the freezer.
I mostly cook my own food, but I do a pot pie about once a week. Tonight it's going to be cedar planked salmon and mashed potatoes.
 
I rinse my beer glass and put it back in the freezer.
I mostly cook my own food, but I do a pot pie about once a week. Tonight it's going to be cedar planked salmon and mashed potatoes.
Well do you wash by hand or use a Dishwasher?
 
I rinse my beer glass and put it back in the freezer.
I mostly cook my own food, but I do a pot pie about once a week. Tonight it's going to be cedar planked salmon and mashed potatoes.

...And what kind of pot pie? I could go for a Marie Callender's right now.
 
Had a dishwasher up until 7 years ago when I moved. I sometimes went a month between washes, never rinsed, licked them pretty clean sometimes. Now I have a 2 legged dishwasher, she don't mind it. I HATE to hand wash.
 
I like Scott Adam's idea when he solicited ideas for his Ultimate Dilbert House a few years back. Two dishwashers. One has clean dishes, you draw from it when you need a dish and after you use it you place the dirty dish in the second dishwasher. When everything's been transferred over you run the dirty dishwasher, it becomes the clean one and you repeat the process.

Other ideas included an artificial Christmas Tree on a platform you could rotate fully decorated into a storage closet behind it once the holidays were over and the workout room with a built in shower for easy cleanup after a workout session.
 
Well do you wash by hand or use a Dishwasher

We hadn't had a dishwasher in our S&B since 1994, why would I want one in the coach?
Besides, it's only me...how many dishes can I use? I do use paper plates, but real glasses, cups and silverware.


...And what kind of pot pie? I could go for a Marie Callender's right now.

I believe this week's is the large sized Turkey Marie Calanders. Or it could be chicken.
 
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