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Comment by snidane | Hacker News Reader

If you cook and have to clean large pots and baking trays, then dishwasher doesn't help you with that as much. These items cannot fit into a regular home dishwasher and these take the most time to clean and dry compared to washing plain plates and utensils.

Also dishwashers are not good for roommate arrangements because unless strict rules are enforced things keep piling up in it or you cannot put stuff inside while it is running. Still have to hand wash it yourself then.

I can see the utility of dishwashers for single people or couples who don't cook, but honestly I haven't found them very useful myself.

Also if you get proper bluetooth headphones and enjoy podcasts, washing dishes can become one of your favorite activities, like mine.

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Large pots and baking trays fit in my dishwasher pretty fine. If you are using 5 multi-gallon pots every day then maybe dishwasher isn’t ideal.

That said, we don’t rinse our dishes or anything. It goes into the dishwasher and comes out spotless. Uses way less energy and water than we would manually washing too.

Dishwasher with roommates actually can be fine. Either run it no matter what is in it at end of day or when it fills up. And just have a lot more dishes than you normally would.

Dishwashers work great for people with an excessive amount of dishes. If you have an exact amount of utensils and dishes then that’s when they fall apart. But that is true of letting dishes pile up in the sink too. So, moot point to me.

The dishwasher has been amazing for my wife who does cook and bake a lot. The whole reason I got one is because she’d spend 30+ minutes everyday standing at the sink manually cleaning every single thing. Huge waste of time and water.

Our kids have moved out so there's just the two of us now.

We solve the 'wait until the dishwasher is full enough' problem by simply having enough dishes and cutlery to last us the 2-3 days it takes to fill it up :)

We do the pots and baking dishes and other awkward items that aren't great for the dishwasher by hand after dinner, but they generally only take a few minutes most days. We try to run the dishwasher end of day or after breakfast in the morning (even if it's not 100% full) to avoid the problem of dirty dishes while it's running.

I agree the roommate scenario is a harder problem, but the same approach might work.

If you have a big family they save a fair amount of time.

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