Enjablog

I purchased my very first appliance yesterday! Ian and I did some research last week and over the weekend and we decided on a dishwasher. Our current one is older than he is and doesn’t really result in clean dishes all the time. And, last week, I overloaded the top shelf and one of the rails became disconnected. In any case, we decided to take advantage of our nation’s birthday by getting 10% off any appliance, with no interest or payments for up to 12 months!

Now, coming from an immigrant household, I have long been hand-washing dishes. I’ve been told many times that it’s more efficient to use a dishwasher, but I was raised with my mother telling me that only lazy people use dishwashers and it wastes more water to rinse dishes before putting into the dishwasher. So, of course I believed my mother…

Dishwashers these days come with many features. Most of which I have no interest in. I want it to wash dishes so they’re clean. I also want it to be energy and water efficient. I don’t care how fast it is or how many different configurations the shelves offer. We usually start the dishwasher when we leave for work in the morning or before going to bed, so I don’t care how loud it is. Anything new would be quieter than the one we currently have anyway.

So, over the course of our research, we found that the average modern dishwasher uses 7 gallons of water for a load of dishes. Most of the energy used to run a dishwasher goes into heating the water. And in most cases, dishes don’t need to be rinsed before loading anymore. There goes that theory.

Average amount of water to wash those same dishes by hand under a running faucet? 20-25 gallons. Average amount if you fill a sink with water to rinse: 5-6 gallons. So, if you have a dishwasher load of dishes every time you handwash dishes and only need one sinkful of water to rinse them, you might be ahead. Otherwise, dishwasher wins. Oh, and older dishwashers average 15 gallons per load, so you’d still probably be ahead using the dishwasher if you didn’t need to pre-rinse.

Delivery: Next Tuesday. We’ll be saving up our dirty dishes until then, so we’ll have a full load of dirty dishes ready! I will have a report next week on our results.