Getting loaded

My least favorite chore growing up was emptying the dishwasher. It’s still no fun.

Loading the dishwasher, however, is a treat. It’s like a puzzle. Plus, I get to sing along to my iPod while doing it. I suspect this is very entertaining, because I will sing along with equal gusto to male and female vocals, and it’s possible that my impression of Kelly Clarkson is less than entirely convincing. (I can still love “Since U Been Gone” without having my hipster doofus card revoked, right?)

Before I talk about my dishwasher loading principles, here are a few thoughts on the subject of washing up, from the late Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food:

> A better way of regarding [washing up] is as the climax of the whole cycle (gathering, preparation, cooking ,eating) and as a piece of ritual which should have engaged the attention of anthropologists and the like to a much greater extent than the questions which have tended to preoccupy them, such as whether food is boiled or roasted. The purification of the utensils has to be the final, culminating stage of any meal, the stage which in effect sets the scene for the next meal and permits life’s processes to continue.

Yep, that’s pretty much what I was thinking while loading the dishwasher last night and singing along to the debut album by Seattle pop-punkers The Lashes. Anthropologists and the like, prepare to be schooled, bearing in mind that I have a basic model of dishwasher and have been using it for less than two years. Hmm, maybe I should be schooled. Anyway, this is what I’ve learned.

##### Matthew’s Dishwasher-Newbie Hacks

1. “Top rack only” seems to have no meaning. If an item is light and likely to be blown off the bottom rack, place it partially under something heavier.

2. The drying cycle exists only to waste energy and your money. It may get your dishes dry ten minutes faster. It may also melt your plastic, if it ends up on the bottom of the dishwasher. Before you tell me to rethink the first rule, the time this happened, the piece of Gladware blew off the *top* rack.

3. Plenty of items are dishwasher-safe but dishwasher-stupid. Most pots and pans fall into this category. If something is going to steal the space of, say, five plates, and it’s not totally encrusted, wash it by hand.

4. Don’t put small bowls that could fit on the top rack on the bottom rack until the bottom rack is full. The bottom rack is the big-and-tall section. Svelte Pyrex custard dishes just make the big plates feel bad.

5. Most foodstuffs don’t need to be rinsed off particularly well before going into the dishwasher. Eggs and flour are exceptions.

6. It would be so cool to have one of those institutional dishwashers with a 90-second cycle.

7. If you’ve put in many years of hand-washing, the dishwasher will make you soft and complacent. I love being soft and complacent.

8 thoughts on “Getting loaded

  1. Liza

    I want to not use the dry cycle, but all our dishes are still wet hours and hours later. Will you come over and dry our dishes?

  2. mamster Post author

    No problem.

    I wonder if maybe the “energy saver” setting on my dishwasher doesn’t work, because actually it seems pretty hot in there after half an hour on the supposedly no-heat setting.

    Plus, inside the dishwasher it’s too dark to read.

  3. Pops

    I thought the “top shelf only” was for stuff that can’t stand to be near the heating element.

  4. mamster Post author

    Maybe, but I’ve never had a problem. Perhaps our heating element is weak, although liza seems to be accusing it of the opposite.

    Maybe Pops and liza should fight.

  5. Lauren

    Oooh, I have been anticipating this entry, as I am somewhat of a dishwasher loading geek.

    You’re right, emptying the dishwasher sucks and I only do it when the dirty dishes waiting to be loaded threaten to take over my prep space.

    My dishwasher must be like Liza’s, if I don’t use the drying cyle, everything is totally wet. While I have yet to melt anything in this dishwasher, I have had to “hot potato” glasses on the rare occasion when I do empty the dishwasher immediately.

    My favorite feature of my dishwasher is the time delay. I load it up after dinner and set it to run 4 hours later. That way I wake up to clean dishes every morning and don’t have to hear it running.

  6. mamster Post author

    If we had time delay, we’d wake up at midnight and say, “WHAT WAS THAT?”

  7. Kathy

    I wash dishes by hand because I do not have a dishwasher, but I have a system that is very fast and I barely have to think about the task. I have 2 dish drainers: one of those midcentury modern icon Dish Doctors, which isn’t very functional unless you have a good system, and a metal IKEA drainer. Andrew doesn’t grasp my system and cannot master the Dish Doctor. I could go on and on about the subject of cooking and washing one’s dishes while cooking, but I’ll leave that up to you, Matthew.

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