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Does Loading the Dishwasher Stress You Out?
Over the weekend, I was having dinner with a married couple, and after clearing the table, there was some tension about the right way to load the dishwasher. As the sole person in charge of my kitchen, this never comes up. What’s your experience?
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Unless they are a brand new couple, they should have worked this out before your visit…
They’ve been married for 10 years. It was just a flicker of tension. They’re really great together.
I have no tension about the “right” way to load the dishwasher, but I do sometimes have a little tension about making everything fit in there that I want to fit in there, because goodness knows, I wouldn’t want to have to do any dishes by hand, lol!
I have little skill at loading the dishwasher. I’m sure someone who is good at it could get twice as much in there. It’s nice that no one is looking over my shoulder.
Agreed. I love not having anyone look over shoulder when I’m loading the dishwasher (or not), doing my laundry (or not), making dinner (or not). 🙂
Even alone, there is the spirit of my mother looking over my shoulder to make sure that I never put a bottle of ketchup on the table for guests, but instead put some in a bowl first. She also had a way of neatly folding and stowing towels that I haven’t been able to duplicate.
yeah, I LOVE living alone for similar reasons….being able to arrange things the way that I want (I get to have as much pink and hello kitty in my apartment as I want to!) and not having to ‘negotiate’ things like dishwashers or taking out the garbage, artwork on the walls, placement of furniture, etc.
I had a roommate for three years and we used to wash things by hand and use the dishwasher like a drying rack, then after about two years I shifted gears and started using it as a dishwasher…she didn’t mind and went along with it; however I have found oftentimes these situations are very difficult to keep constructive with roommates, and it requires a lot of backing down.
when I moved into this apartment to live by myself a friend asked me if I ever got lonely and it surprised me….she saw things from a totally different perspective. For me, having my own place feels like an oasis & escape.
Not having a dishwasher to load is what stresses me out. Eventually I’ll put one in and plumb the pantry so I can put in a stackable washer and dryer instead of running down to the basement to do laundry but new windows, porches and vinyl siding are seeming more important right now.
I almost always wash dishes by hand, except after dinner parties. But I understand about priorities. Today, I was in Home Depot drooling at the new appliances. But first on my list is fixing the broken tiles on my terrace.
It doesn’t stress me, but it apparently stresses some of my friends. They think there’s only one way to load their precious dishwasher, and insist that they’re the only ones that have achieved this higher state of knowledge – so my help is not required. Fine – I’ll just bring the stuff for them to load!
Do think this has any relationship to gender?
Very possibly…certainly I’ve never met a man who fussed about guests loading his dishwasher “incorrectly”.
I was thinking the opposite. My very informal, anectodal sampling indicated that men take loading the dishwasher more seriously than women. But I could be totally wrong here.
I think that the right way to load is that of the loader. It’s the same principle as road trip music – if you’re in charge of the car, you get to pick the tunes – when packing a dishwasher, whoever rolls up their sleeves gets to do it their way. Long live the dishwasher!
Excellent rule of thumb!!
My S.O. mentioned that his second wife was really obsessed with some crazy order of loading the dishwasher. Plate, saucer, saucer, plate or something. They divorced after a year or so. Now she is referred to as E.T., for Evil Tracy. I am amused beyond words and don’t give a damn about the loading of the dishwasher. Throw ’em in and set a delay for the middle of the night when we’re sleeping.
The loading of the dishwasher is a control issue. It’s an illustration of the power struggle that exists in every relationship. Not that power struggles are permanent and destructive, e.g. always a winner, always a loser, but that taking turns and shifting roles should be accepted as part of the natural play within a relationship.
Thanks Navarre for setting me straight.
to me its about being efficient and loading the dishes to get max in yet still clean. My mother would load them so they would never get clean which drove me nuts. So i try to get as much in and never run it half full because it seems wasteful. However i would never tell someone how to load it- this is not a life or death situation here- if you are willing to help go for it. I may have been guilty of rearranging to get more in at one point or another but I would never take issue with a helpful guest.
My father was a master at getting the most stuff possible in a trunk. This seems like a related skill.
Wendy, like you, I live alone and rarely use the dishwasher. I always wash by hand. It’s not a statement on others but for me it’s actually just easily to go ahead and not that out than accumulate dirty dishes for several days to justify running the washer. I don’t think I had a system when using it other than grouping like-sized items with like-sized items but my goal was always to make certain everything got in and would come out clean. I’m not terribly fussy about these matters. 🙂
I’m grateful for the dishwasher for dinner parties, but it rarely get used otherwise.