It's always interesting to see random activities highlight how different people's lives can be. As of the time I'm posting this, half of the comments mention a dishwasher.
I've never been in a house with a dishwasher, and literally just realized I couldn't tell you if I've ever seen one, outside of a screen. To my perception, they're like a magical tool that supposedly exists... somewhere. Maybe.
That's not a complaint, and not really noteworthy. I'm pretty sure most of humanity doesn't have one, after all. I just think it's funny when you stumble into another bubble, inside your bubble.
I know that I, too, enjoy things that don't seem real to someone else. Even being able to read this post is a privilege. Now, that's funny.
My mom taught me to always wash dishes by hand. She hated dishwashers, because they would leave spots, and that wasn't acceptable. For the longest tine, every dish I washed had to pass her inspection. If they looked anything less than perfect, she would point it out and/or rewash then herself. Eventually she trusted me enough to not double-check, and honestly my eyesight was better anyway.
Correctly used dishwashers are generally better at cleaning dishes than cleaning by hand, plus they are way more energy/water efficient than cleaning by hand.
Yeah honestly I never used them cause I thought they sucked and wasted water. After being educated about modern dishwashers I started to use them more often. Now I pretty much only use dishwashers for all my dishes (except non dishwasher safe stuff). Looking back, it's a game changer. The time saved is amazing and the dishes look amazing.
Can you tell me how to correctly use mine? It doesn't actually clean my dishes properly unless I pre scrape, scrub, and rinse most things...and then at that point it seems almost pointless to be using the dishwasher.
If you have hard water, look in to citric acid. Rinse aid alone still left my dishes cloudy no matter the quantity of detergent I tried. A bit of powdered citric acid leaves them shiny.
Everytime I leave food/sauce particles on utensils and dishes, the dishwasher doesn't get it all off because it hardens after a day or two while it sits in there waiting for the next run. So I rinse everything off by hand and then use the dishwater to get every last molecule of food and idk, kill germs I guess. Plus it then drys everything for me.
Whenever I try this, it does not work at all. Granted, I don't have a super new model or anything, but still. The food will harden and sometimes get permanently get stuck to the dishes as a sort of white soap-crust looking entity.
Are you using detergent for both the two cycles the machine runs? Are you softening your water using salt (if applicable to your machine)? Is your machine decently clean?
All of the above will contribute to cleaner dishes, in approximate order of importance.
It’s possible some people just have better dishwashers, and that because the one that came with my apartment is not high end it can’t do what other washers can.