An interesting article from WAPO (via the Seattle Times) reveals that for many immigrants to the U.S, using the automatic dishwasher in their home is the equivalent to Drinking The Kool-Aid.
Many – nay, most – simply won’t use the thing. It is seen as frivolous and unnecessary. According to the article;
If they have a dishwasher — and many do, because it is standard
equipment in most homes — it becomes a glorified dish rack, a
Tupperware storage cabinet or a snack-food bin. It’s never turned on.
Dishwashers are also seen as overly complicated and mysterious. Think about the way alot of Americans feel about programming the VCR (that’s what they had before DVD players, kiddos).
At bottom, though, many immigrants simply think that they can do a better job washing up than any old machine, thanks.
Graciela Andres laments that her daughter, son-in-law and three
grandchildren have abandoned washing by hand. "They do it the American
way: They put everything in the wash machine, no matter if it’s a
little spoon," said Andres, who emigrated from Bolivia in 1981.
You can almost feel the scorn and contempt, can’t you?
I say, good on ’em! "Go not gently…", and all that.
They should start an organization and print T-shirts with the slogan "They can take my dishes away when they pry them from my wet, soapy hands".
GET THE STORY.
I’ve seen this many times. My wife was born in Chicago, but lived much of her life in Chicago, and she prefers not to use it.
It isn’t that it’s too complicated, its that by the time you rinse off the dishes…heck the water’s running, you might as well wash them and get it over with.
Unless you’re hosting a party or baking a three course meal, it is almost as much work to load and unlload the thing as it is to just wash them by hand.
Don’t dishwashers save on water if used properly?
“They can take my dishes away when they pry them from my wet, soapy hands”.
I love the slogan, but it doesn’t sound like much of a challenge 🙂
It isn’t that it’s too complicated, its that by the time you rinse off the dishes…heck the water’s running, you might as well wash them and get it over with.
Many dishwashers don’t require any pre-rinsing.
A dishwasher is not the “American way.” I am second-generation American and have never used a dishwasher at home. (Actually I used my first one last week at a Residence Inn hotel in Montreal. It was really loud.)
Being without a kitchen for several months now, (don’t ask) I realize that dishwashers have several nice aspects:
1. They save water.
2. They save time.
3. They kill germs.
4. They keep dishes out of sight.
Being without a kitchen for several months now, (don’t ask) I realize that dishwashers have several nice aspects:
1. They save water.
2. They save time.
3. They kill germs.
4. They keep dishes out of sight.
Yep. While I can respect the idea of doing them by hand, I wish the proponents of it would take a tone that didn’t make them sound like St. Paul of the dishrag.
Scott
It was really loud.
Our old dishwasher (from the 80s) was REALLY loud, but we just got a brand new one and you can hardly notice it. The engineers must have really improved on the acoustics since then. It’s great.
I can perfectly understand what is said here! I’m originally from Colombia, though I live now in DC, and while I was there, we were one of the only families that had a dishwasher. My friends used to think it was really strange, and they would even tease me and call me a “gringo” just because of it. Part of the reason why none of them used one is that, being able to afford a maid since labor is so cheap there, there was very little need to use this energy-consuming machine.
As far as the “gloryfied dish-rack” idea goes, I can tell you that I now several people who do that, including my parents (even though now they live in Florida and used to have one in Colombia). Part of the reason is that they can save on their energy bill by not using it, as well as the fact that it really is very convenient as a dish-rack. Never thought somebody would actually write an article about it though!
When my parents built their home in Florida in 1981 they had a dishwasher installed because it was de rigeur. They never used it, not once. (not even for storage) After my mom’s death we put her home on the market and had to replace the dishwasher because it had deteriorated (with no use!).
And as for me, never had one, never once used one, never want one. Washing the dishes, from stacking to putting away, is meditative.
‘thann
If I didn’t have a dishwasher in my home, I’d use nothing by Chinet.
My wife and I both hate doing dishes.
I have a dishwasher where I live now &, since I’m single, it takes me a whole week (or longer, depending on what I eat) to fill the thing! While I’m not a fan of doing dishes, I really enjoy doing them when I’m at my Mom’s, though, ‘cos I’ll wash & she’ll dry & we get to talk while doing them. It’s fun. (Except when she leaves the cupboard door open & one of us bumps our head!)
So, that’s sorta like Ruthann’s meditative dishwashing, I guess. But for me, ironing . . . that’s meditative!
I laugh when I read this. I was so happy when my father bought a dishwasher in the ’80s because then my hands were spared! My mother knew that only really, really hot water would get the dishes clean, so some of my worst memories from childhood are of pulling my aching, bright-red hands out of hot water after the last dish was done. My brothers and I would sometimes “cheat”, of course. We’d pull a dish out of the sink to scrub it and do the rinsing with cooler water.
I also reminds me of my grandmother who still used the washboard and woodstove-iron method of laundry into the ’50s. (With a household of 5, no less!) She had really strong arms, hands, and back – no need to buy a gym membership!
I’ve never had a dishwasher, never particularly missed it, and there wouldn’t be room for one in our kitchen anyway. I do the cooking, and husband & kids do the dinner dishes.
This last, BTW, came as a great shock to a Chinese coworker of my husband’s who came to dinner one night and saw him and one of our then-teenage sons doing the washing up. It seems that in China, Men. Do. Not. Wash. Dishes. Ever, and to this day Ms Zhou has not yet recovered from the sight.
Hey, it could be worse. Try moving to England and see what they say about Americans thinking a dryer is normal! OK, dryers are sold in stores but the flats and houses I’ve rented have never had one (but they all have had washers), and if you mention this lack to your English colleagues, they act like you want to club baby seals to death.
The normal thing here is to use a drying rack. Which means that in a damp cold climate, you hang your laundry in a damp cold room and let it add damp coldness to the atmosphere for three days. Then you iron it the rest of the way dry.
Gene,
just one thing….ironing, ‘meditative’ ??? Want to meditate over my ironing? I’m a big girl so you can meditate for a really long time 😀
I detest ironing.
Withing 5 minutes my back is killing me no matter how I adjust the height of the ironing board…I blame the epidural(that did not work) I had with my firstborn, I never had a problem before that.
I do however, have a dishwasher, it’s economy class and it rarely is effective and has to be screamed at before it will so much as wet a dish…it’s called ‘daughter’…I’m hoping to get the newer version, ‘son’ installed, as soon as he get’s past the clumsy stage of breaking things.
God Bless.
Atlantic,
Do you mean what we english refer to as ‘tumble dryers’ ?
If so, I’ve rarely known a house without one, were not quite that stone age 🙂
God Bless.
I’ve lived here for eleven years, in and around London (NW3, then Kent), and once I have seen a combo washer/dryer in a potential rental (flats and houses), and no separate dryers at all. And yes, I was indeed jumped on by colleagues when I dared suggest this was any sort of lack.
I can only tell you that I’m very suprised that this has been your experience…and I’ve lived here for 37 years.
God Bless
All I can say is, I cannot live without my dishwasher. We run it every night at bedtime, unload first thing in the morning, and just stick the dirty cups and dishes in it as the day goes on. When the kids are home from school for Christmas or summer vacation, it gets full by lunch so I run it twice a day. 🙂
As far as noise/pre-rinsing: you need to check a good source like Consumer Reports for reviews of individual models. Some machines are much quieter than others, and some do a much better job than others of getting the food off. Ours is reasonably quiet, but very good at getting things clean. We just do a quick scrape of the plate with a fork, stick it straight in the rack, and it comes out clean.
Hm, ukok, I’ve lived here for 42 years, and I side with Atlantic on this one. We have neither dishwasher nor tumbledryer (my wife does the cooking, I wash the dishes) and not that many of my friends and acquaintances have them either.
Besides, why on earth do we need a tumbledryer when we have all those bracing Atlantic breezes to dry the washing on the line (after that second rinse that really washes out the soap)?
Hm, ukok, I’ve lived here for 42 years, and I side with Atlantic on this one. We have neither dishwasher nor tumbledryer (my wife does the cooking, I wash the dishes) and not that many of my friends and acquaintances have them either.
Besides, why on earth do we need a tumbledryer when we have all those bracing Atlantic breezes to dry the washing on the line (after that second rinse that really washes out the soap)?
I should mention that it is to the credit of the UK that we have washers with internal water heaters so you can have a really hot 90 or 95 degree Celsius cycle.
Why would you not want a dishwasher? You stick dirty dishes in, you pull clean dishes out, and you have more time for other things. They also get things much cleaner than I can often do by hand!
Albertus and Atlantic,
I’m all for hanging out washing on the line (what could smell better than freshly line-dried laundry!) but we are a ‘wet’ country (yes I can think of a few jokes about Blair too) there just aren’t that many days of the year when anyone living outside of the Sunny-South can rely on the weather to dry their clothes.
I’m a Midlander, perhaps our working class, (bigger?)family orientated lifestyles demand that we have practical facilities that aid us? I’m also asthmatic and can’t dry clothes on the radiators anymore without wheezing, so I wouldn’t be without the tumble dryer.
Do you think this is yet another north/south division?
Although my relatives and friends in the South also have tumble dryers so I don’t know so much about that.
And just how do you dry your clothes in the accumulative months of wet weather? I’m curious. Is it perhaps that some more affluent people are able to ‘dry clean’ their clothes or have their laundry done for them, that we working class are not in a position to afford?
God Bless.
p.s. According to this article in 2004 approximately 40% of homes had tumble dryers, it’s difficult to say where those 40% were situated, that would have been interesting to know
http://www.mtprog.com/ApprovedBriefingNotes/BriefingNoteTemplate.aspx?intBriefingNoteID=368
p.p.s. Happy Drying!
I’m the oldest of 9 children and we never had a dishwasher. I still don’t, and don’t really miss it.
I still hate to iron, but some people love it. My mother used to iron underwear.
It’s quite curious that a topic about dishwashers and tumbledryers should attract so many comments! Anyway, ukok (I really like your site, by the way) I can’t vouch for other people, but we don’t have a tumbledryer or dishwasher because we can’t afford them at the moment, we don’t have the space even if we could afford them, and they don’t really seem necessary to us.
As far as washing dishes is concerned, my wife cooks so it seems only reasonable that I do the washing up. And I rather enjoy doing it: you take a pile of dirty dishes, wash, scrub and out they come, gleaming and new, and they stay that way until you use them again. If only one’s own soul responded as well to cleaning!
To dry the washing (and we have two children, 4 and 1 and a half, so there’s a lot of it) we use the clothes line whenever possible. Admittedly this can mean that you have multi-coloured flags flapping away for days on end in winter, but then that adds a little bit of colour to a dark and gloomy season. But if all else fails then the washing is brought in, put on dryers and stood in front of radiators. Besides, we’ve found that clothes drying like that can also be turned into excellent tents for hiding in before launching attacks on unwary parents!
It’s quite curious that a topic about dishwashers and tumbledryers should attract so many comments! Anyway, ukok (I really like your site, by the way) I can’t vouch for other people, but we don’t have a tumbledryer or dishwasher because we can’t afford them at the moment, we don’t have the space even if we could afford them, and they don’t really seem necessary to us.
As far as washing dishes is concerned, my wife cooks so it seems only reasonable that I do the washing up. And I rather enjoy doing it: you take a pile of dirty dishes, wash, scrub and out they come, gleaming and new, and they stay that way until you use them again. If only one’s own soul responded as well to cleaning!
To dry the washing (and we have two children, 4 and 1 and a half, so there’s a lot of it) we use the clothes line whenever possible. Admittedly this can mean that you have multi-coloured flags flapping away for days on end in winter, but then that adds a little bit of colour to a dark and gloomy season. But if all else fails then the washing is brought in, put on dryers and stood in front of radiators. Besides, we’ve found that clothes drying like that can also be turned into excellent tents for hiding in before launching attacks on unwary parents!
Without Dishwashers I would not be alive right now. I am in a family of 8 (going to be 9) and I can tell you that washing all that by hand three times a day would…erm…not…be……
cool?
It just would stink.
Have just asked an English friend about the dryer thing, and he chimes in on the “hanging them to dry, then ironing them” thing. I think I’ll be in shock for the next couple weeks.
Eileen, be consoled. Most English people I know (including me) only hang clothes out to dry in the summer months or fair weather, other than that they (clothes not people) get shoved in the dryer…and if possible, not ironed at all when they come out!
The trick is to take the items out of the dryer before they have cooled, of course 🙂
God Bless.
Incidentially, just because you use the dishwasher doesn’t mean you have to use the dry cycle. Watch it, and as soon as it starts it, stop the dishwasher and open it up. They’ll air-dry.
I think this also transcends generational lines. Both of my baby-boomer parents come from quasi-immigrant families, but were born and raised in California. The dishwasher they’ve had in their home for twelve years has probably been used four or five times. Now I find myself always washing by hand while my perfectly fine dishwasher is used only a couple times a month.
I I once had a roomate who liked to eat dinner in the living room, leave his plates on the coffee table, and put his dirty socks on the plates.
I never trusted handwashing after that, and if my apartment had a dishwasher, I’m not even sure I’d trust that either.
I eat off paper plates.
Why wash the dishes when you can just throw the dishes away?
My parents get the hard paper (plastic)plates and then RUN THEM THROUGH THE DISHWASHER. eeew. My sister in law’s parents do the same thing.