Glorified Dish Rack
Posted in News/Info on 10/09/2005 05:25 pm by enjanerdWashing Their Hands Of the Last Frontier
Check out page 3: my cousin made the paper.
His American roots stretch back to 1963, when his grandparents emigrated from China. In three generations, nobody has used as dishwasher.
Lee, 22, of Springfield said he does not understand the appeal.
“Do you have to wash it beforehand to rinse it off? And if you wash it beforehand, why do you even need to use it?” asked Lee, a program manager for the Washington-based Organization of Chinese Americans. “I see a lot of my white friends doing it. I’m like: Oh, well, whatever. I guess I can’t judge them on how they clean their dishes.”
Other choice quotes:
In many immigrant homes, the automatic dishwasher is the last frontier. Long after new arrivals pick up football, learn the intricacies of the multiplex and the DMV and develop a taste for pizza, they resist the dishwasher. Some joke that not using the appliance is one of the truest signs of immigrant heritage, whether they hail from Africa, Latin America, Asia or Eastern Europe.
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.
…
Like other appliance-makers, GE extols the dishwashers’ energy efficiency. The U.S. Department of Energy agrees, citing findings that dishwashers, with a full load, use half as much water as washing by hand. Statistics from the D.C.-based Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers show that using the dishwasher six times a week costs $49 a year, a little more than the refrigerator.
Ok, so I can see the argument that a dishwasher is more efficient: it uses less water, less energy, gets things cleaner with less effort, etc. I can also see the side of it where people want to have the dish clean and back in the cupboard right away. I can go either way and am pretty indifferent on that end of things. But for those who dry by hand, there’s evidence that drying with a cloth allows bacteria a place to grow and then be spread onto the dishes. That’s gross to me. And most of the people I see using a cloth are the ones who are washing the things that don’t go into the dishwasher. (Although, in the article, it does talk about people washing and drying dishes together. I just hadn’t witnessed that.) Explanation?Legal Eagles dvdrip Ghoulies trailer
10/14/2005 at 22:05
i live for my dishwasher. i couldn’t get anything done without it.
where’d i learn to love it and use it? my mom.
go figure eh? she says many people from immigrant families don’t use them, but to her, it’s something she’s glad she has.
10/17/2005 at 09:35
I guess technically I am from an immigrant family, and my father was fresh off the boat and mom was born here after her parents ran away from occupied poland. (Why not just leave poland anyway, it’s always occupied by someone.) But I digress. Growing up, we washed all the dishes by hand – when I moved out and lived somewhere with a dishwasher, I discovered the simple pleasures in life. Three opinions:
1 – I think a dishwasher is much more useful than a garbage disposal.
2 – To the people who have an irrational dislike of dishwashers – I don’t see you riding a horse to work… sometimes technological improvements actually do make life a little easier. Just think, you can free up time to go wash your clothes on a rock in the river.
3 – I always say ‘work smarter, not harder’.