If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I am a bit. . . anal. Or, to be nice, we could call it “Detail Oriented”. And, in my defense, Chris is even more detail oriented than I ever dreamed of being.
I know. Ali doesn’t have a chance, poor kid.
Anyway, due to our analness, and the fact that we have always had REALLY old dishwashers all of our lives, we have always been quite the “scrub before putting into the dishwasher” type.
Which really stinks. Why have a dishwasher if you’ve got to do all the work beforehand? I’m sure that all of you are completely over this, and just stick dishes in as is.
Due to our most recent REALLY old dishwasher dying a few months ago, we had to get a new one. Dishwashers aren’t one of those fun things to shop for. Spending a couple hundred bucks on a dishwasher doesn’t really give you that “consumer high” that shopping for, say, clothes or furniture does. So we got a low end name brand one. We paid just enough to get name brand, but without the frills.
Even though we got a new dishwasher, we still stuck to our old scrubbing ways. I’ve always seen those commercials where the lady sticks the awful, burnt and crusty dishes in the dishwasher and they come out perfectly shiny and clean. And my favorite is when they stick the entire CAKE-IN-PAN in the dishwasher, and when she opens it, there is no trace of cake anywhere to be seen. Her poor sewage pipes. Or wherever dishwasher refuse goes.
I always thought that commercials like the following were like the hamburgers that they show on McDonald’s commercials: Pure and unashamed false advertising. aka LIES.
Back to today. Our fridge reallllllly needed cleaning out (one of my LEAST favorite tasks in the whole world), and I still haven’t been feeling great, so I decided to give our dishwasher (and these commercials) a test.
So I loaded our dishwasher up with a few things from the fridge after only scraping the big parts in the garbage. I left all the goo, all of the dried stuff, and saved myself my least favorite part, the scrubbing.
The two biggest things were glass dishes of what used to be blueberry crisp. BLUEBERRY. Here are what they looked like before going in:
I was concerned that I would open up my dishwasher and discover that the entire inside of my dishwasher was stained a dark purple.
But, alas, I opened up the dishwasher to see this!!!
Ah, it feels wonderful to be free of scrubbing!! I am going to be trying this more often!! But I have a feeling that Chris won’t be able to let go of his “thorough” tendencies. . .
J.C. is also anal about pre-washing. So anal that by the time he’s done “pre-washing”, he might as well go ahead and put the dish up because it’s already clean! We have a fairly new dishwasher that gets crusty stuff off as well (and it is so wonderful!), but he still has a hard time letting go of his old habit.
Yes my Mom still pre-washes too, I guess old habits die hard. I don’t prewash though since our dishwasher get the crud off and I am nowhere near “detail oriented”.
Yay for dishwasher freedom. :) :) It’s a nice feeling isn’t it. :) :)
Wow! That’s awesome! What kind/model is it?? We’ve forever been handwashing our dishes because we have an old dishwasher too, but now we’re about to remodel the kitchen and will most definitely be dishwasher shopping soon!
I don’t have a dishwasher,(it wouldn’t fit in my kitchen),so I’m always scrubbing.But,if I had one I would probably do it anyway since I’m use to it.
Jasmin
It’s a Whirlpool. Our fave feature is that the silverware thingy-ma-jig is in the door, therefore giving you a FULL bottom shelf to pile dishes (like my blueberry pans) to your heart’s delight.
My mother in law tells me all the time that she has heard that it is better for your dishwasher if you don’t wash the dishes first. Somehow that doesn’t sound right but she insist it is true. Heath and I still rinse the dishes before loading them.