One tip I have for dishwashers: use the soap dispenser as your dirty/clean indicator.
When you empty the clean dishwasher, immediately fill and close the soap dispenser. As long as you do that, you now have a reliable indicator for everyone of clean (open) or dirty (closed).
Yes! A magnet is an extra step, off the critical path. One needs to add soap eventually; why not use it as signal? This is the same principle I keep trying to explain to my college: Data should be entered ONCE then sourced everywhere needed.
This is my system for my work apartment. My wife rejects it at home, for reasons I don't understand well enough to relay. I go along, I want to stay married.
On that theme, why is this post about emptying a dishwasher? The crucial issue in most good marriages is how to load the dishwasher. Emptying is pretty obvious.
This is also my experience. My wife just delegates loading to me, I'm less stressed looking at the partially loaded dish washer and we're both happier.
Sometimes we cite from [0] to each other and laugh...
Hey, heads up - you should probably look into that speaker a bit more. I'm not disregarding everything, obviously there's some truth to what he's talking about - but he's got a very warped view on marriage, relationships and women in general.
I won't link anything, but I'll let you look it up yourself.
I think a lot of what that video latches on to is typically how our generation, and the generations before us have treated "dealing with problems". I think you'll find younger people will look at this video and go, "what the fuck".
Wiser words unlikely to be said. My wife wants the utensils up, they are up. I’m trainable and willingly adaptable.
Ironically, I recently got into a merge sort discussion with her regarding how to load utensils. Sorting on load reduced unload time, she got it but didn’t care for the detour in time complexity. She just gave me a snide look at that part.
We use a bucket sort. My wife grudgingly conceded it was faster and doesn't hate doing the dishes as much as she used to (but I still do them most frequently).
Ugh, the resistance to such a simple and useful thing drives me nuts. I’ve also used the soap dispenser as an indicator, but I can’t get my wife to do the same or pay attention to the signal when it’s set. Moreover, she half pre-washes everything so I often can’t tell whether they’ve been fully washed or not.
I have a magnet that says "Clean" facing up, and "Dirty" upside down that I bought for $1 in 1998. When the dishes are emptied, or when someone starts the dishwasher, we spin the magnet so that the appropriate side is readable.
In hindsight, it is probably the most productive single dollar I've ever spent.
We have such a magnet for the dishwasher at work. Problem is that people are unreliable at actually flipping it. I just wish there were a display that would say what the current dishwasher state is.
Yeah, those magnets only work with people that read them. We also bought one for the cat because nobody knows who fed the cat, if anyone. The cat looks fat and every now and then someone gets a dirty bowl. The solution for the dishwasher is simple. I fire alarm in the dishwasher that goes off when this 2 events happen:
1. The door was open after a complete wash cycle.
2. 5 minutes have elapsed from the door opening and there still dishes inside.
If they don't already exist, there's got to be a market for dishwashers with a built-in clean/dirty indicator. With smart appliances nowadays, it doesn't even have to be a physical display (in the home.)
You get to a state where there’s one mug in the dishwasher. Can you tell if that’s clear or dirty without closet inspecting the mug (and even then depends on your definition of clean. Imagine you filled the mug with pee, then emptied it, then put it in the dishwasher. Could you be certain of knowing the state of that mug alone?
The heat of the items gives a clue, as does the number of clean looking items, but there are ways to break that system.
Some machines, even very cheap ones, have an indicator light for the cycle finished. Some just show if the cycle is finished and so it indicates if someone has opened the door since then, but better ones keep that indicator lit until the next time the door is fully closed giving more control over the light.
I had a dishwasher at my last place, landlord special and everything. But it was smart, if you did a load of dishes, a little led would turn on saying it's done. The led wouldn't turn back off until the dishwasher was fully closed. So you could open it, be lazy and take a clean fork out, and then close it most of the way, and the clean light would stay on.
Our system is: an open dishwasher can accept new dirty dishes.
So if the dishwasher is closed, it's either cleaning (put dirty dishes on the counter) or it's done cleaning. And when you open the closed dishwasher you immediately must transfer all clean dishes to the cabinets. And then it's able to accept new dirty dishes.
Newer dishwashers tend to automatically pop the door ajar to help dry contents. I go with that and tend to leave a clean dishwasher ajar. Also helps isolate stinky food items in a closed washer (I've never understood intentionally piling dirty things on the counter, or worse like my wife does, wet in the sink. I do it temporarily while lazy, but I consider that laziness not staging.)
Great idea for 95% of people, but just a reminder if you’re reading this and have a toddler: they are obsessed with dishwashers and will find a way to try and eat that soap.
Or maybe it’s just mine. Our dishwasher is shut and turned off at all times, I’m dreading the day our toddler has the finger strength to push the power button on.
Definitely keep the soap away from him, but let him watch you fill it, run it and empty it. Soon he'll get the hang of it and will be more than happy to help you.
If you didn't load the dishwasher it can be hard to say if the dishes are clean without being pretty thorough, which can take a few minutes. It would be nice to have instant certainty, I'm going to keep this in mind.
Depending on how full you load your dishwasher, that might require you to take out a dirty dish again to check… which strictly speaking, is a little gross for some unknown reason.
Close-yes, Fill-maybe not. Use the dispenser as a marker is a good idea, but it is almost always dump and will ruin you soap. I use tablets which are even more sensitive to moisture, and are expected to stay dry and slowly dissolve in hot water.
Dirty dishes can be stored inside or outside the dishwasher. I wouldn’t even consider running a dishwasher at less than ~75% load, unless very unusual circumstances.
Which is why I, as a single household, don’t use mine.
I agree that I won't run it unless mostly full or special circumstances (going to cook a lot or have lots of people over) but I don't understand how small households don't use the dishwasher! Assuming you are eating most meals at home we (2 people) run the dishwasher about daily on average. Between pots, pans, food containers and plates I find it full up quickly. I think people who don't use it are just afraid to put cookware inside. Except for a few particular items you can get almost everything dishwasher-safe these days.
And even if you do have a period between cooking where it does sit for a few days running a dishwasher even a quarter full uses less water, power and soap than washing by hand. So doing that occasionally if it is starting to smell isn't an issue.
Two person house here, I just wash the dishes by hand. It doesn't take much effort, just a few minutes after a meal, they always come out exactly as clean as I want, and you can wash the dishes you prepped with while you cook (as long as it isn't an attention-intensive dish). It's also is friendlier to our painted ceramic bowls we usually eat out of.
Dish washers didn't seem worth it for two people in my opinion, either the dishes built up inside it and food dries on them to the point where the dishwasher didn't clean them properly, or I ran the washer with hardly anything inside it and felt like I wasted a lot of soap and water. Maybe it was simply too big of a dishwasher and that was part of the problem.
We had a high end home rental for a vacation a few years ago that had multiple dishwashers that were just being used as cabinets! It creates a whole new set of clean/dirty problems.
I assumed this was just a scam being pushed by dish soap companies in their commercials. I didn't think anyone actually ran mostly empty dish washers.
Dish soap and water are not free, even if you consider them cheap. I usually run my full dish washer once or twice a week. A regular container of dish washer pods has a little more than 60 pods and cost $20. Ignoring the water cost and assuming I always wash it twice a week I'm spending at most $40 dollars per year on dish washing pods, usually less.
If I follow your advice to the letter I'm running the machine three times a day, everyday so I'm spending $30 a month or $360 a year. Even once a day it's still $120. And ignoring the water cost.
All to not have to unload the dish washer when it's clean or spend an extra 15 seconds checking when lazy? Total waste of money.
If you're doing full loads of laundry or dishes there isn't a difference. In the case of laundry you're probably using too much detergent if you're eyeballing it and using the same amount as pods if you're measuring.
I have to say I never had the problem everyone here seems to have.
Starting the dishwasher is a decision we generally take together (and if unilaterally decided, we do tell the others that we programmed it for the night) and in the morning we all know the dishes are clean, and we empty the dishwasher (or hear it being emptied).
But more importantly, if the dishwasher is closed, full and not on (or blinking to indicate programmed for the night) then it has to be clean. If it's partially full then it has to be dirty? unless someone is emptying it right now which you would certainly notice.
One thing that you can do that will greatly simplify dishwasher management, is to have two dishwashers.
There is one clean dishwasher and one dirty dishwasher. You take plates from the clean dishwasher, use them, and put them in the dirty dishwasher. Once the clean dishwasher is empty, the dirty dishwasher is run, and then becomes the clean dishwasher, and the empty one now becomes the dirty dishwasher.
There are analogous situations in system design as well.
I did this for a while. It doesn't work as well as you imagine.
There will always be some items that are left in the 'clean' dishwasher - eg. that lemon squeezer you only use once a month.
Also, with two dishwashers, thats a lot of cutlery/crockery in one or other dishwasher. Sometimes the cupboard is empty. Now every time you want an item, you need to check the cupboard and the dishwasher.
You might say, why have a cupboard, simply only store your plates in the dishwasher. But sometimes I have stuff that needs washing but I haven't yet used up all the clean plates... So I need somewhere to empty them out to.
every cupboard in your house is a dishwasher. The dishwashers are smart, and if they have been opened, they know there might now be something dirty in them, so they will wash overnight that night. It's wasteful of energy because you'll be washing 99 clean plates and one dirty plate, but I think it would lead to a good user experience.
If you keep reasoning down this path you eventually arrive at DishOps, where you dispose of dirty dishes by hurling them out of a window, and provision new dishes automatically on demand, by ordering them from Amazon for same day delivery as part of spinning up each meal. From a systems design point of view it approaches maximum theoretical efficiency, with no stocks of 'dirty' dishes accumulating anywhere, or scheduling conflicts over when to run cleaning cycles; the same approach also scales up from a single snack to a multi-course banquet for several visiting diplomatic entourages.
makes me wonder if dishwashing as a service has been tried. DWaaS. use your dishes, put them in a bin, on a schedule someone picks up that bin and leaves another with a weeks worth of clean dishes. i think it could work until the VC money dries up
> makes me wonder if dishwashing as a service has been tried
For commercial customers, absolutely. I first came across services like this a long time ago in Hong Kong[1] but it's pretty widespread in mainland China, Taiwan, and parts of SEA[2] because local restaurants tend to be quite small. Sometimes you can tell because you'll get your dishes as sets in sealed plastic[3] wrappers.
I used paper plates and wooden spoons for over a year when I didn't have a dishwasher. I think I ultimately saved water and definitely saved a lot of time.
Some Japanese kaitenzushi restaurants use these relatively simple automated dishwashers[1] for plates, and I’ve thought for years about ways you could design something similar for households with standardized dishware.
Instead of every cabinet being its own dishwasher, you could have a wall-mounted dishwasher that automatically distributes clean dishes back to the cabinets.
Maybe this will be my retired-and-bored passion project later in life.
Surely that's far less efficient than just having removable trays / draws / shelves that you swap between a cupboard and a dishwasher. In the past I envisioned this as being a rack on wheels that rolls into the door but continues on an opposing cupboard door (like a dummy dishwasher, with no internal parts). At which point you put a fresh rack in the dishwasher proper.
Having a front/back buffer design is interesting to me. I say that as someone that does like the idea of having multiple dishwashers. I don't see myself doing that sort of treatment, though.
Building on how I think I'd treat them is closer to a ringbuffer of workers. Would look a lot like the front/back idea in slow use, but I could easily see bursting through to where I have both running at once. And the destination of dishes out is still to the cabinets, for many other reasons.
There are a number of designs that have to half-height dishwasher stacked atop each other, so only takes the space of a normal dishwasher, that accomplish exactly this. The only problem is they tend not be as good quality as conventional dishwashers, and you only have half of the usual capacity (which can be worked around in many cases when necessary)
Some half height dishwashers are decent. The real trick seems to be to very carefully measure dinner plates - the dishwashers only just fit most plates, and if you put just one plate in that's slightly too large, it blocks the washer jets, and then the whole load comes out dirty and people curse the poor performance of the machine.
Maybe it’s a function of dishes per day, but two makes sense from having lots of dishes in a single day, or one for large pots and pans should that be ok in your world.
100%. Entry level Bosch with timer here; I take care to load it efficiently, ensuring rotors are never blocked. I always use the highest temperature setting (70c -
I most often run it during the day when powered by PV) along with rinse aid, the good Finish Powerball Ultimate tablets.
There's zero mistaking clean from dirty.
(I'll also run a special machine cleaner every few months; empty machine with a special detergent. Machine is great when run like this.)
I've been wondering why dishwasher makers don't include a "clean indicator" with a reset button. Automatically set the "green LED means clean" light when a wash cycle completes, pushing the light turns it off, make it obvious enough and you'll likely get 99% compliance.
Once we’ve transitioned into the filling state, we can work as slowly as we want on moving dishes from the counter to the dishwasher, assured in the knowledge that the counter mountain is no longer growing, meaning it will eventually disappear with even the smallest amount of ongoing work.
Wouldn’t that depend on the difference between arrival rate and fill rate?
According to the diagrams, the author lives in a well trained household where dirty dishes created by others are placed directly into the dishwasher, if the dishwasher contains dirty dishes.
This reminds me of another similar system in which a single action means little, but once a condition is met things change: school.
I’ve specifically wondered about how sunk cost fallacy plays into these systems.
Say you believe that the value of college is only realized once you have a degree. (Oversimplified of course, on purpose.)
Purists of rationality might say that it is sunk cost fallacy to believe that you should finish the last class, since you’ve come this far (the sunk cost part).
But as this article states, the condition change is the meaningful bit; at what granularity should we measure something like sunk cost?
In other words, it’s not irrational to take a final course just to get the credit and finish the degree, even if the course seems useless, because it is a necessary step for the higher level condition change.
Sunk cost fallacy would be taking and failing 3 years of college courses and deciding to continue because, "Well, I'm already three years and $30k (or more) in." Being one class or semester shy and making a decision to finish, if it gives a major payoff (starting salaries often jump substantially, some career paths are totally closed without the degree, etc.), is perfectly rational.
I decided to drop out of college with 2 classes to go.
Because a) I had reached my self-imposed deadline, b) I would have to do another full year of college for just those 2 classes[1], c) I was already having to turn away freelancing clients to make time for school, d) you don’t go into debt for college in Europe
[1] The classes were in different semesters with a mandatory weekly tutorial/lab presence, which doesn’t transfer across years
Only vaguely related, but when you fill your dishwasher, put the cutlery sorted into the basket. Thus it's just one grab for the forks, spoons and knives each to take them from the machine into their compartment in the cutlery drawer, no more sorting required.
My wife requires that we have cutlery pointing in both directions, in two neatly sorted piles, to optimize space usage and look good. But we also sort into the drawer not the dishwasher (I have to sort at least once, so it seems faster to me not to do it twice by sorting the dishwasher too)
Totally. The other part about it is, with my lifestyle, I fill the dishwasher throughout the day as I go, so when loading, it's barely more effort to put in into the right basket. Whereas sorting it at the unloading end, you've got to do the sorting all at once.
I prefer a dishwasher with a shallow cutlery drawer at the top, rather than a basket. It's trivial to slot the cutlery into the tray in groups, where it washes perfectly and comes out tidy.
This is off topic, but I noticed most of the other comments here seem to be about managing dishwashers, so what the hell...
I always thought it would be cool to have a dishwasher that doubled as cabinets.* It could have a slot for dirty dishes and clean dishes could be summoned at any time using a touchscreen. The machine would clean the dishes when necessary and without requiring further intervention (beyond keeping the soap hopper full).
If you want to steal this idea for your startup be my guest. You can even sell subscriptions to seasonally-appropriate compatible dishware.
* Edit: I see this exact idea is already posted as a comment downthread, so apologies for retreading.
Your spouse asked you to empty the dishwasher/clean the kitchen for the n-th time and so as a procrastination/excuse you started bikeshedding strategies.
Having 4 kids ages 5 and under, while also running a startup, I can confidently tell you that disposable dishes are the true answer to efficient dishwasher management.
That seems a little strong. We spend like $50/month on paper plates, which are compostable, and I get back many hours of my life that I can use to create valuable experiences with my kids. I don't think that's anymore morally wrong, then say, going on a vacation.
This actually became a political issue in Israel- ultra orthodox Jews could easily have more than 4 kids ages 5 and under while their religion forbids them from washing dishes or use electrical appliances on Shabbat (Friday evening-Saturday) so they tend to buy disposable dishes being in conflict with a country trying to be somewhat green.
Great article. Using household examples to explain theory is very powerful.
Along those lines the most recent Goldratt / Theory of Constraints book “Rules of Flow” has a chapter on Thanksgiving dinner preparation, similar to the original ‘Herbie’s Scout Hike’ that is pretty good.
The article assumes that the dishwasher needs to be emptied of clean dishes before dirty ones can be put in. This is not the case. The clean dishes will take on the dirty state as soon as dirty dishes are inserted into a machine with clean dishes.
When you empty the clean dishwasher, immediately fill and close the soap dispenser. As long as you do that, you now have a reliable indicator for everyone of clean (open) or dirty (closed).