Washing up by hand , really that difficult? 🤔

I bought one last year.  Used to be I cooked and Julie washed up.  Now on my own I really cannot be arsed with both cooking and washing up hence the dishwasher.  I love it.  also its astonishing how much cleaner pots and pans now are ( I hate to think how nasty the chemicals must be) and also its great for degreasing bike bits

Now that fairy liquid is utter shit I find the greasy pans need to go in the dishwasher if I want them squeaky clean.

Happy enough without one.

But bigger meals / entertaining are a bit of a PITA. Never really found a satisfactory way to handle these issues / choices:

a) Having a tip in the kitchen / dining area that is full of dirty plates whilst your guests are still around

b) Sending everyone off home and, in the wee small hours when you want to be in bed, facing the huge pile of dirty plates

c) Getting up the mooring after and being faced by a huge pile of dirty plates

That's the one time I yearn to be able to load the machine and at least half the amount of washing up.

But otherwise, just don't miss having one.

Ace, minutes ago I thought to myself that I would not eat anything if we didn't have a dishwasher 😃

Never had one before this wife but now the thought of hand washing after eating is terrifying.

But…. I also think spending hours cooking and minutes eating is crazy. Wife totally disagrees.

Ardent washer-upper here. I quite like it in a mindful way.

I've no desire for a dishwasher. My experience of them at work and at other peoples house is they cause more issues than just washing up 🤣

.When we designed our new kitchen the company designer found it odd we didn’t want one

Same here.
We sold the one we had cos we wanted more cupboard space, I think we used it a handful of times while we had it.
There's only 2 of us anyway. I quite like washing up, just as much as Mrs Egf likes ironing. I wash up, she irons.

Apparently a dishwasher is better and cheaper than hand washing.
The first I absolutely agree with, the second .... 🤷🏻‍♂️

But I can put a very full dishwasher on overnight and everything's extremely clean by the next morning.
Alternatively, I can put it on when the sun is shining and have my dishwashing done for free.

When we designed our new kitchen the company designer found it odd we didn’t want one even though we had a space for one .

I'm not surprised!
If I was looking around a house and it didn't have a dishwasher, but had space for one, I would be very surprised.

Living on my own now, cooking and then dealing with washing up is a PITA, but I’d have to have my kitchen remodelled to accommodate a dishwasher and while it would be more convenient having one, I don’t have a problem hand-washing dishes etc.

I use ours only if we've had loads of folk round etc...

I'd not fit one if I re did the kitchen I'd have a wine fridge

It's never even crossed my mind to have a dishwasher. How would it warm my hands up?

I’ve no desire for a dishwasher. My experience of them at work and at other peoples house is they cause more issues than just washing up

Only Issue I have is that I can't put my bone handled knives in it and the silver spoons have tarnished a bit
#middleclassissues

I just keep a jetwasher in the kitchen.

Apparently a dishwasher is better and cheaper than hand washing*.
The first I absolutely agree with, the second .... 🤷🏻‍♂️

But I can put a very full dishwasher on overnight and everything's extremely clean by the next morning.
Alternatively, I can put it on when the sun is shining and have my dishwashing done for free.

When we designed our new kitchen the company designer found it odd we didn’t want one even though we had a space for one .

I'm not surprised!
If I was looking around a house and it didn't have a dishwasher, but had space for one, I would be very surprised.

15 minutes tops after your tea in the evening job jobbed

That's pretty much 1 working day/month doing washing up!

* I presume that means washing up to the same standard with the same temperature water, etc and drying up.

I'm on the more efficient and just easier. More so if you're the type that doesn't understand how micella work and continually runs the water.

I got ours from somebody at work for £20 to charity about 8 years or so ago, just needed the door seal cleaned. It's an old clockwork type so not much to go wrong (it does occasionally stick though).

I hate to think how nasty the chemicals must be

Mostly caustic, so actually better for the environment than soap.

Although rinse aid is gross when you think about it.

Yeah it’s odd not having one, OP is old though so I’ll let him off. My mum is exactly the same mindset 😂 They save energy/water/time & do a better job than I can be arsed to do so a no brainer for me!!

I don't use riseaid.  No need with beautiful edinburgh water

We moved into a house with a dishwasher and we've never turned it on. We use it for storage and would rather have a cupboard.

I don't mind either way, however.......before all this energy crisis cost of living palaver kicked off our old one was broken down for maybe six weeks , and it's true that a dishwasher saves water , energy and 'Fairy liquid' ( other products are available). I have always kept a record of meter readings at this house and there was a very obvious spike in water consumption and gas use as well as always running out of the aforementioned cleaning fluid during the down time of the old pot and pan rumbler. This was the subject of one of those consumer type programmes on Radio 4 a while back and they came to the same conclusion. It is also true that a copious supply of cutlery and crockery is needed as the bugger becomes a second store room of the most used items !

That’s pretty much 1 working day/month doing washing up!

That was my thinking. "Just" 15 minutes every day. I don't spend that long on all the other chores combined.

I don’t use riseaid. No need with beautiful edinburgh water

You will after a 18months-2 years .... Your waters harder than mine and you will get away with it for a while but it'll catch up with you.

Likewise with salt.

Ain't nobody got time and money to be wasting on heating oil to wash dishes.

We hand wash the sharp knifes and the wooden chopping boards. Everything else goes in the dishwasher and is washed by the wonder of the sun

I don’t use riseaid.  No need with beautiful edinburgh water

We didn't use any when we were in Balerno and still don't. Glasses come out sparkling.

How do you know when someone doesn't have a dishwasher.....

Family of 4, I wish we had one but our kitchen is tiny.

When we designed our new kitchen the company designer found it odd we didn’t want one even though we had a space for one .

I’m not surprised!
If I was looking around a house and it didn’t have a dishwasher, but had space for one, I would be very surprised.

When we do our kitchen we'll take the one thats there out - I'd rather just have a cupboard. I'm not really interested in configuring my home around guesses about what someone else would want to do with it. With it there and available to use I just have not need or want to use it. The difference cumulatively  between the time it takes to load and unload compared to just washing the dishes is negligible (I'd question the 15mins - I often do our washing up while I'm making coffee - which takes 4 minutes. But the more meaningful difference for me is once the few minutes spent washing up is done... it done. I dont have to wait the duration of the dishwasher cycle between the first few minutes of labour and the last few minutes of labour. Which means I don't have to

put a very full dishwasher on overnight and everything’s extremely clean by the next morning.

Fire brigades tend to advise against using dishwashers and washing machines while you're asleep or out. Although its only a risk to your property if you're running it while you're out, They're in the top ten of appliances that cause house fires. They cause more house fires that deep fat friers for instance- but you don't leave a frier, oven or hob running unattended while you're asleep. Personally I'd just be bothered by the noise though.

Not for me, old school washer upper.

Allegedly Confucius said a wise man spends more time eating than cooking and washing up.

Allegedly Confucius said a wise man spends more time eating than cooking and washing up.

You're thinking of Snoop Dog 🙂

We had a new kitchen 2 years ago. I wanted 2 (slimline) one dirty, other clean (effectively a cupboard). Mrs was not having it, no way. We’ve got one slimline and would not be without it. Still think 2 would be nice.

With two kids we can have the dishwasher on three times a day at the weekend. Normally just the once a day in the week.

I think if I lived alone I wouldn't bother emptying the dishwasher, I'd just live out of it and refill it after each meal.

I think if I lived alone I wouldn’t bother emptying the dishwasher, I’d just live out of it and refill it after each meal.

Takes me 2 - 3 days to fill it.  It goes on 2 or 3 times a week

In our first house, I took out a cupboard to fit a dishwasher, it changed our lives for the better, the time savings add up to hours each month. When we had a new kitchen fitted we decided not to have cupboards, just dishwashers. Now we just put stuff back in and set them off, we don't even need to unload them, because they the cupboards.

Can’t fit a dishwasher in our kitchen. I use washing up time to listen to new albums or playlists

. I quite like washing up, just as much as Mrs Egf likes ironing. I wash up, she irons.

ironing I can’t be arsed with. It’s that infrequent in our house that my daughter cried the last time I got the ironing board out because she’d never seen it before 😂

Exactly the same tj, in fact I put it on 10 minutes ago. Due to various reasons my 15 year old broken one didn't get replaced for nearly 2 years and bloody hell it was a right ball ache and along with my then caring duties it often meant I was leaving it till I had to do it.

Our family were early adopters of dishwashers as I can remember my mum getting one over 40 years ago.

Those using rinse aid and salt... You don't need to unless you are not using all-in-one tablets, which are pretty much limited to the most basic own brand ones.

There is normally a way to turn off the low salt/rinse aid alarms on the dishwasher.

I remember talk of having to rinse everything off after hand washing in the sink. Shock horror, washing up liquid bubbles don't taste soapy!

We had a dishwasher for 30+ years but moved to a new house with a tiny kitchen in April. There’s no room for a dishwasher and we honestly don’t miss it.

Apparently a dishwasher is better and cheaper than hand washing.

FWIW the only "proper" study i could find on that was using the "tap running continuously" hand washing up model.

Which i've never done, not once, in probably 40 years of washing up.

A typical dishwasher uses about 15 litres, the bowl in my sink takes 8.

So, errrr, i'm not sure.

We've got one.
I never use it though. Does me nut in how you can never find anything because it's rotting away in the dishwasher that's waiting to be full.

Then emptying the thing when full sucks too, especially as it's all below counter level.

I quite enjoy my ten minutes after dinner listening to Mark Riley prattling on.

Aggravates my eczema though I reckon, and washing up gloves are seemingly only made for women.
Size large is way too small. Can't get the buggers off.

We have one, they’re great. After a day at work and then cooking and eating late I really can’t be arsed washing up, I want to sit on the sofa and vegetate for a while, chuck it in the dish washer; it’s a labour saving device.
However at our house in Ireland, there’s no dishwasher but I’m not working or eating late and washing up isn’t such a chore for me, I’m time rich there.

We had one as at home when I was growing up, family of six so plenty of washing up, since growing up (and now old) I've never had one, and don't want one. I really don't find washing up a chore, I'm the main cook in the house and tend to wash as I go, after the meal it's just plates cutlery and maybe the odd saucepan or baking tray, rarely takes more than 10 minutes.

The only real battle I have WRT our dishwasher is that the sink is now just the place my wife and MIL dump things to "soak" in a few inches of bacteria ridden water knowing that I will fish it out and put it in the dishwasher for them.

5 of us in the house, no way I'd be without a dishwasher now TBH.

There's 2 things I'd call hand washing up. Neither are "difficult".
1 boring
2 irritating
1 is obvious, and if you don't find it boring, then you're just weird.
2 Stacking it on the drainer..never enough room, thing fall back in the sink, don't stack properly, just a waste of time.
Dishwasher has racks designed for the stacking, shove it all in. Go do something more interesting.
I live alone and can't imagine wasting any unnecessary me time with my hands in the sink like my mum in the 70s

didnthurt
Full Member

With two kids we can have the dishwasher on three times a day at the weekend. Normally just the once a day in the week

how many meals a day are you having??

We're in temporary digs without a dishwasher and it's not as good as having a dishwasher. Didn't use one for years but now we have kids it just frees up a bit of extra time to sit and watch hey duggee.

[stw] our butler informs the maids that it needs doing [/stw]

2 Stacking it on the drainer..never enough room, thing fall back in the sink, don’t stack properly, just a waste of time.

You need a better system - there’s a skill in stacking. My pile of washed pots is a work of art! 🤣🤣

I'm contemplating moving the washing machine into the bog, so we have space for a dishwasher.
I get eczema, so the detergent aggravates that. My hands don't fit in most marigolds and even then my hands still itch with the marigolds.
We generate a daft amount of washing up. OH thinks nothing of grating cheese into a bowl then putting the cheese on the food. Rather than just grating the cheese directly.
The other trick is chopping up chicken, then using a fresh board and knife to do the salad. Whereas if you do it the other way round, you don't need a separate board/knife.

I hate to think how nasty the chemicals must be

Yeah it's just a simple caustic chemical that dissolves grease. It's possible because you don't put your hands in it.

We've been putting ours on overnight to take advantage of cheap electricity. But this means not waiting til it's completely full of plates, so that means filling it with whatever needs a clean like grillpans and chopping boards that take up too much space in an otherwise full dishwasher. Consequently they all come out super clean which is lovely.

Wow, very definitely two camps here. A few of the comments prompted me to check ours out, it's so quiet that a light shines onto the kitchen floor to show that it's on and a beeper sounds to tell you that it's finished, ( that's the noise argument sorted). The spec sheet says that it uses 9.5 litres of water per wash in economy mode, we have a large family , it holds 14 place settings when full and I can't wash those in a bowl in 15 minutes or with only a couple of gallons of cold water and one tab of detergent no matter how I try. Drying our after dinner debris with tea towels would create an even bigger problem and bottleneck at the washer/dryer so that's another benefit. The energy rating doesn't look good however at 'E' , if I've read that right. Even so , all in all at our house it's a yes for the convenience, labour saving and environmental economy. Yay !

Just the pots and pans get handwashed here as it means the dishwasher will take 2 days worth of the small fiddly stuff that I really can't be bothered to wash and dry.

My wife thought it was frivolous at first so had to test my theory with one off Freecycle. It wasn't dead for long before I was told to get another.

FiL took one out of his new house as he seems against any technology his mother didn't have growing up with the exception of gas fires which are run so economically that you would have to lick it to know if it was on.

@mashr

Three meals all home cooked. Do want a menu? 😜

Ah go on then....

For breakfast we may have Porridge to start with followed by poached eggs on toast with fruit and yogurt to finish.

Lunch could be soup with a toasted cheese and pastrami croissant.

For our evening meal how about spicy Mexican chicken tortilla wraps with a mixed salad. Apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream for dessert.

I'm starting to feel hungry again now 😅

why have a dishwasher and hand wash pans?   thats just weird

A dishwasher is the greatest thing I've ever purchased, I hate washing up with a passion so even avoid going on holiday somewhere without a dishwasher. I also dislike that you can almost certainly tell when someone doesn't own/use a dishwasher as their crockery is dirty.

I also dislike that you can almost certainly tell when someone doesn’t own/use a dishwasher as their crockery is dirty

Twaddle!

Is it that difficult? No - but neither's arithmetic, and I still use a calculator.

Without a dishwasher I would quickly slip into a world if unhappiness. Once I thought it has broken and I actually cried. Luckily the outflow had just frozen up.

It is more than I can handle to go to work and cook and wash dishes. I would live off toast if I didn’t have a dishwasher. It is rumoured that I am getting remarried just to deal with the things that don’t go in the dishwasher.

themuffinman - there is no doubt at all that my pots and pans are much cleaner than they were.  Crockery not so obvious

@tjagain decent non stick fry pan and mostly steamed veg means the pan washing isn't that bad and I'm pretty good at putting sauce pans to soak. Quick wash down and good to go again.

3 of us and a slimline dishwasher means this method just works for us as we get 2 days worth of eating in the machine. If circumstances were different I'd probably do something different.

Family of six, so dishwasher runs overnight

Every night

Even when we had one pots and pans never went in the dishwasher. Take up too much space.

And ours had nice wooden handles! 😀

Loathe washing up. Hateful job. Why I’ve never bought a dishwasher I’ll never understand. I seem to be perennially procrastinating doing the sodding pots.

I love my life but washing up and paying council tax should be banned.

If I had room I would have two dishwashers and create a routine where I took clean dishes out of one while I fill the other and rotate on a daily basis. I wouldn’t need cupboards.

why have a dishwasher and hand wash pans?

Because two pans take up the space of about 20 plates, or several dishes with baked on grease and crud. Hand washing saucepans that have only boiled veg, say, is trivial and much easier than washing the aforementioned stack of plates or oven dishes.

Usually the pans are in the dishwasher, but there's a calculation to be made when there's not room for everything.

Moved into a house with a Boshe dishwasher and didn't use it for few months as I never saw the need for one. But now I'm a fundamental evangelical dishwasher addict. Eat, put dishes it in a box come back and it's clean. Magic.

Apparently dishwashers are more environmentally friendly after a certain number of dishes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zkzq?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

It's not that washing up by hand's hard, it's that every time I finish, some bastard dirties up more dishes. It's a dishiyphusian task. And the logistics of "stuff to wash" "stuff that is drying" "sink is full and I want to do something else involving the sink" is just an absolute minefield.

Hands up anyone else that's drinking out of a flowerpot or something because all the mugs are inexplicably dirty

Is this the new 'I don't own a tv'? It is, isn't it....

If I had room I would have two dishwashers and create a routine where I took clean dishes out of one while I fill the other and rotate on a daily basis. I wouldn’t need cupboards.

There must be a cupboard where the dishes live now. If you put stuff from wherever your second dishwasher would live in there, now got the space for the second dishwasher.

With two adults (who work full-time) and two under 10s in the house life's too short to wash up the endless stream of stuff by hand.

I'd never had a dishwasher until my wife insisted a few years ago, now I'll never not have one 😆

Is this the new ‘I don’t own a tv’? It is, isn’t it….

Yes it really is, see also tumble driers which during the winter are definitely the way to go.

Obviously a dish wash owner here, can clearly tell when glasses haven't been cleaned in the dishwasher. Only major drawback is the obvious inability of some people to stack them and using them half full on destroy the planet mode because there is one item in there that's needed (that's what the sink is for).Despite the dish washer we still have the it's just soaking in the sink issue until the water is cold and disgusting meaning you can't use the sink for other things but that's just user error rather than the fault of the dishwasher.

My mate insists hand washing is better for environment, so I looked it up. My dishwasher on eco uses 0.8kwh and 9 litres of water, albeit 3.5 hours.

A new miele is down to 7 litres and 0.7kwhr, not worth binning a perfectly good old one yet but they are getting better all the time.

We've just had the kitchen redone, and were washing up in the bathroom basin for about a month. That really made me appreciate my dishwasher!

There's been a dishwasher in our kitchen (whether mine or my folks when I was a kid) pretty much my entire life - and I'm 57.

My folks got one in 1970 - Mum hated domestic work and when she went back to work after my little brother started nursery they bought one. Ordinary working folk. It wasn't until I was late teens that other folk started to get them.

It was also the first appliance I got when I bought my first flat, 1986, and I've had one ever since. I've also had cleaners for the majority of my life too, and still do (twice a week).

Do you folk without also use twin-tubs or is it a Mangle in the yard?

No one laid on their deathbed and wished they'd spent more time at the kitchen sink.

Yes it really is, see also tumble driers which during the winter are definitely the way to go.

I'd like to see the science behind this claim.

We fill a repurposed lobster pot with our dishes then lower it out of our living room window on a rope into the river Irwell for a few hours. Lasagna dishes etc take overnight

Tumble driers on the other hand are the devils spawn

When there's 5 of us (plus regular friends over), a dishwasher gets well used in the house.
When it's mrs_oab and I, we hand wash. We don't leave things to soak or pile up, other than a couple of coffee cups.
I find cleaning up is a nice time to whack some music on, pop the kettle on while I'm cleaning ready for a brew at the end.

There’s something of the loom-smashers about this thread… 😂

About 6 or 7 years ago our dishwasher packed in and on Christmas Eve, right in the middle of preparing 4 days worth of food for people we had over during the festive period. Could have cried? I think I probably did. What a total PITA. Although we had lots of willing volunteers Christmas lunch alone took an an hour and a half to wash up. What a total waste of time, that in the non Christmas period, I simply do not have! Hateful, hateful job.

I have never owned a dish washer and don't own a tumble dryer.

My kitchen is small and open plan and it would take a week to fill a dishwasher. If your dishes are cleaner in one than hand washing you were doing it wrong.

My parents in Enzed have one of the two drawer dishwashers, one can be filled while the other is washing which is handy when you have fed loads of guests.

I hate tumble dryers they are for lazy disorganized people, wreck your clothes and are noisy and wasteful. A washing line, hoist or clothes airer with dehumidifier works fine and keeps things in better condition.

Tumble-dryers are for lazy people…? Ha ha ha. How about a family, all doing different sports every day, plus school clothes, in winter… where on earth do you propose the 2 washes a day end up drying? We dry as much as we can in the house or on the line but living in the wintry pennies, outside drying is not practical (weeks of 100% RH) and there’s only so much space to dry stuff inside. Sadly, we do have to use the tumble-dryer a few times during the week.