The Dead Dishwasher

Of all the things I've ever discussed on Facebook, I never would have imagined that my dishwasher would be one of the more controversial topics. About 2 weeks ago, my dishwasher died. We've had it about four years, and the poor thing has never sounded quite right. It's always chewed, coughed, sputtered, and groaned its way through every load, and it got worse every time. Since I am always on a mission to de-clutter and simplify my life, I contemplated not replacing but just removing it and finishing out the area for extra storage. And therein lies the controversy. How can a person live without a dishwasher?

The answer is: very easily.

Before giving my husband my official answer on whether we'd buy a new one or not (because that would be more cost effective than repairing the current one which was our first choice), I decided to take a trial period on handwashing. Upon announcing this to my personal Facebook feed, I was met with an outcry of diverse feedback. The dishes won't be clean, it will take too much time, I can use it as bonding time time with family who helps, it will be more efficient. I never realized dishwashers could create such love 'em or leave 'em attitudes. I decided to do my own research and tests, and this is what I found:

Research results
1. There is no universal consensus on which is more effective for cleaning dishes. There are too many variables on water temperature, soap, water usage, cleaning time, etc. It also depends on the electric dishwasher and person being compared.
2. There is also no consensus on which method is more green. Again, there are too many variables.

An evening's dishes on the drying mat

Home test results
1. My dishes look cleaner. There aren't bits of food dried on to the plates or rust spots on my utensils. I don't have to re-wash anything.
2. I find handwashing to be rather relaxing. A little Pandora radio and I am all set to listen and enjoy. It remind me of my childhood when my job was to clean up our kitchen. It was a mental break that I loved, and I find I still do.
3. My kitchen is cleaner. Even when I used to run the dishwasher, I still had things I had to handwash like my daughter's special character plates, bakeware, stoneware, and cookware. Many times I'd just leave them setting around for a day or two, especially if I was running the dishwasher because I couldn't get enough water pressure for the sink if I tried to do both at once. Now I just wash up everything at once.
4. It made me de-clutter my kitchen - again. When you wash everything right after you use it, you find you don't need as much. Before, we'd go through 6 or 7 coffee cups in two days because they kept winding up in the dishwasher waiting to be cleaned. Now we have 2 or 3 at most in the sink, and usually it's just one. So I went through all of my dishes and utensils and narrowed it down.
5. My electric bill has gone down. We track our weekly electricity usage online, and while I'm not sure just how much the dishwasher contributed, I do know our bill has dropped by several dollars and all other usage factors are pretty stable.
6. I haven't seen a bug in a week. The thing I really hated about using a dishwasher is that it usually had dirty dishes in it instead of clean ones. There are only 3 of us in the house, so we never used a lot of dishes to begin with, and it would take 2 or 3 days to make a full load. This attracted bugs who saw the dishwasher as a buffet. Since I stopped saving up dirty dishes, my kitchen has been bug free.

Overall, I feel like eliminating the dishwasher has simplified my life. Honestly, I only missed it once, and that was during a family holiday dinner. But we only have those dinners about 6 times a year, so I think I can handle the extra dishes those six times. I know going without a dishwasher isn't for everyone, and I would never suggest someone voluntarily give theirs up. But I would like for everyone to ponder something: how many of our modern appliances are really needed? Could our lives possibly be better without them?