Hacker News Reader

It also assumes that you have exactly as much stuff as will fit into a single dishwasher, and that you go through it all at the same rate, such that when the "dirty" dishwasher is full, the "clean" one becomes empty enough that it can switch roles.

Right now, our dishwasher's top rack is full of top rack stuff, whereas the bottom rack has two dishes and a coffee cup. I guess we go ahead and run it, and then... move everything from the second dishwasher to that one? This is definitively more work.

You just declare the other dishwasher dirty and that’s that. If you want you can unload it to your cabinets like you would with only a single dishwasher. In that case you’re still at worst the same amount of work you would if you didn’t have two dishwashers. But ordinarily it will be far less.

And yeah I thought about this years ago and ruminated on these issues.

But isn't the other dishwasher that we just declared "dirty" still full of clean dishes?

And furthermore, if I just have two dishwashers, both of which are considered "dirty", I no longer have clean plates.

Unless, of course, I unload it to the cabinets. Which I do now. Without paying $800 for a second dishwasher.

> But isn't the other dishwasher that we just declared "dirty" still full of clean dishes?

No, it's probably about three-quarters empty, because you probably use roughly the same crockery every day, unless you do something particularly bizarre like having three soup-based meals one day and three plate-based meals the next. Sometimes you wash a couple of plates that were already clean, sure. Or you move them into the "clean" dishwasher before declaring the other one "dirty", which is no more effort than putting them into cabinets (often less). And sure maybe a couple of days a year you have a big party, or really do eat soup every meal, or something, and you have to do something different. But the vast majority of the time it makes life easier.

clearly, the solution is to have three smaller desktop dishwashers then

Something beautiful about the Internet is that you can say "Hey, here's a thing you could do" and some guy will come and say "Well, actually, I am in a situation where I can't do that". No matter what you do, someone will have that.

"You could buy one variety of socks and you'll never have to worry about sorting them!" -> "Well, I have two jobs and they both require I wear uniform socks in different colours so this won't work for me, Mr. Smarty Socks Pants"

"If you place a dishwasher pod in the slot as soon as you empty the dishwasher you'll know if it's dirty or clean when you open it" -> "Well, I can only afford a single dishwasher pod at a time and I put my dishes away in the morning, go to work and use the day's wages to buy the one I'll use that night, so that won't work for me Mr. Richy Two Pod Pants"

"If you put your weighing scale in the bathroom it'll make it easy for you to measure your weight every day" -> "Well, my bathroom is too small and doesn't have level flooring anyway because it's wide enough for one man and is located on the San Andreas fault with a crack going through it. So that won't work for me Mr. Flat Floor Pants"

"If you use shellcheck, you can catch a bunch of errors in your shell scripts" -> "Well, I use my custom shell CrazySH and shellcheck won't work on that. So that won't work for me Mr. Normal Shell Pants"

I wonder if it is possible to construct a suggested thing that no human could respond to in this way. I think it's impossible. But what do I know. I'm just Mr. Can't Comment Pants.

I don't think my kitchen is very small compared to the average 2-bed London house.

Also technology connections said dishwasher pods are sub-optimal

Like everything in this piece, this example seems to overlook major aspects of human experience and preference in its rush to draw smug “one little trick” conclusions.

Independently of cost and space considerations, why would you want such a ”system” as this dual-dishwasher setup?

I take aesthetic pleasure in unloading the machine in the morning and restoring my cabinets to a condition of full, orderly, clean stock. My relationship with the machine is as a tool that transitions items from dirty to clean, and it’s aesthetically displeasing to mix those purposes with the ordered, dry, clean cabinets. Those are places where you know you’ll always grab a clean item without having to check a post-it note first.

I take pleasure in owning the right cutlery and servingware for a wide variety of food and situations, and in using the correct subset for the correct occasion. The idea that I would use everything from the Clean Washer every time I fill the Dirty Washer utterly confuses and repulses me.

This, like essentially all of this person’s examples, reminds me of this Chesterton’s Fence kind of thing the rationalist types get on about: if a bunch of people are doing a thing, take the time to ask why before you assume your One Bright Trick is something new under the sun.

Eating from a plate straight out of the dishwasher is something 19 y.o. me would have done, if I had a dishwasher.

That plate needs a resting period first.

I totally agree. Generally if there is some inefficiency or imbalance on paper because of human perception according to Rory, the actual reality is that there are other costs that humans from other perspectives consider which cause the imbalance in aggregate (e.g. the dual dishwasher space usage or the "south london is cheaper because it is not on the tube map despite their being overground trains into central london").

I tried to apply some of Rory's advice to a real product - basically, some combination of "give a longer wait time than the actual time for better experience / improve the experience of the euro tunnel by putting Wifi on it for $1m rather than spending $100m making it faster" (I know the real sums were much bigger).. and the idea of "live in the South of London because it's not on the Tube map so the prices are much cheaper yet the travel distance is the same!"

The result? Sales dropped when we gave a longer wait time, which was not compensated by repeat business.

I lived in a place in South London. Without night transport options, I couldn't stay out on a night out without forking over crazy money for Taxis. And the other major thing I noticed? Not a single woman I met in that time had any interest in coming back to my place, in the part of London she didn't know, without many options to Uber back to her place if she wanted etc. The only person I met in this time when I was single yet on paper successful took me back to their place. I couldn't figure it out but I felt dissatisfied. I moved then to a much more central place (yet the same cost) and started a casual relationship within a couple of months of being there. Trust me when I say, everybody generally preferred parties and hanging out at a place on the Tube.

I suppose I love Rorys ideas and they captivate me, the comparisons with nature are great. But the content is as much advertising as it is about the psychology of advertising and human tricks. The problem is Rory doesn't consider that for a young man you might want to be able to get night transport or that a young woman you meet might prioritize safety and familiarity, wanting to know the area better, be closer to their home and have transport options. A place away from Tube Stations also by virtue of it's costs is more of an honest signal that you don't have the money to live in central/"tube" London if you wanted to. As a young man, if I had realized that, I obviously should have lived like my peers a few tube stops away or in a nice house several towns away. So basically deviating from the social peer norm generally has costs. It's easy to point out one trick benefits but you miss out on what you don't observe.

I find it even more bonkers than that, even. Let's "frictionless vacuum" the problem: I live in a home in which all we eat is breakfast cereal. We need one spoon and one bowl per meal per person. But we own 25 bowls and 40 spoons. When we run out of bowls (that is, when the "dirty" dishwasher is running with a complement of 25 bowls), the "clean" dishwasher still contains 15 spoons. At the next mealtime, we each get a spoon and a bowl. When we're done eating, we put the dirty dishes in… Well, not either of the "clean" dishwashers!

It becomes absurd faster when you consider what a realistic household would own and eat and use. "There's no unloading necessary," he says. Absolutely ridiculous.

> But we own 25 bowls and 40 spoons. When we run out of bowls (that is, when the "dirty" dishwasher is running with a complement of 25 bowls), the "clean" dishwasher still contains 15 spoons. At the next mealtime, we each get a spoon and a bowl. When we're done eating, we put the dirty dishes in… Well, not either of the "clean" dishwashers!

So you end up washing those 15 spoons again. Big deal. Or you notice that you consistently have leftover spoons in the clean dishwasher and put some into storage, or get rid of them.

On average you use more or less the same dishes each day, so you reach equilibrium pretty quickly. You wash a bit of stuff that was already clean. It's no big.

So you're running your dishwashers inefficiently. It really does feel like a "big deal". You use more water, more salt/dishwasher cleaning chemicals, and more electricity on empty runs. The clean dishes and utensils getting extra wash degrade faster, the machine itself wears off faster too.

Maybe one day someone makes a dishwasher that can do continuous washing efficiently, dynamically adjusting for the number, type and locations of the dirty kitchenware. Until then, it feels super wasteful.

> It really does feel like a "big deal".

It does, but our feelings are likely miscalibrated here. Dishwashers are insanely efficient.

> You use more water, more salt/dishwasher cleaning chemicals, and more electricity on empty runs.

Unlikely. You're still running the same programme at the same frequency (you were always going to run the dishwasher when you ran out of bowls, the only difference is you have some extra clean spoons in the dishwasher when you do).

> The clean dishes and utensils getting extra wash degrade faster

Technically true, but when was the last time you had to replace a spoon because it had worn out? And how much did it cost when you did?

> the machine itself wears off faster too.

Maybe. Not convinced. You're not putting any extra dirt in it, and the sprayers etc. are likely designed to handle a full load (e.g. the shelves will always be balanced, because you'll always have a full set of dishes when you run the dishwasher).

Just to emphasize how efficient a dishwasher is with water, I had a clog in my kitchen pipes (turned out to be much deeper than my drain snake could handle and we had two clogs) and the plumber couldn't come in until a few days unless I was willing to pay for an emergency plumber. I would run the sink for 30 seconds and it would clog. But I could run an entire dish load and it would only fill a bit of the sink and everything would drain okay. Now I have a nice modern dishwasher, but it just goes to show that literally handwashing a handful of dishes is probably as efficient as doing an entire load of dishes in the dishwasher.

Well I guess in this weird household you wouldn't have that many, you'd just have the dirty one and the clean/using one each?

But you have to go to something close to 'we only eat cereal' for it to sort of work, which is crazy (and not healthy).

It's a bit like telling people to be like Steve Jobs and have a single outfit, your laundry will be so much easier, your wardrobe so much neater: sure, but it turns out most people actually don't want that... So it's really neither here nor there what problems it might solve.

2 dishwashers idea works more in a single person or 2 people household depending on habits. The dishes in the 2 dishwashers are the ones you use frequently, and for occasional times, you get the extras in the cupboards. It's also a decision you make during construction. The difference in cost between a dishwasher and a full bottom row of drawers is not much different, especially if they are beside each other and you already wired up one dishwasher.

> I live in a home in which all we eat is breakfast cereal

???

I believe OPs point is that supply imbalances and asymmetries exist even with just one kind of meal, and they would be even more prevalent in a more-realistic scenario where multiple kinds of meals have different demands on your supply of clean stuff.

For example, 10 bowls, 10 spoons, 10 forks. If the make are fork-using salads and spoon-using soups, the shared resource--bowls--will run out before anything else does.

Dishwashers are also somewhat gross, unless you're cleaning and sanitizing the filter very regularly. A dry and clean environment for dish storage is probably less amenable to molds and bacteria developing on surfaces.

Seems like lots of people don't really understand that. They somehow think it cleans itself but then I see on the shelves products for "smelly dishwasher" so there must be some disconnect there.

I clean mine ones in couple weeks, there is some gunk building up by the doors, filter of course, so just wipe it and then run once on highest temp and so far no smelly dishwasher - but still if I would just left dishes after cleaning for 2 days I would have to run some cleaning again because they would not small bad but somewhat "not clean" for sure.

Yes. The claim "you don't lose any storage space" may not be barking insane, but it is drooling idiot stupid. Also, you have to spring for a second dishwasher.

A second dishwasher is like a thousand bucks. Well worth the convenience over years of use.

Assuming that the system works exactly as the author describes, which it would not.

And assuming that you have more money than time, which isn't true for everyone.

More than that. Replacement costs multiply the price by a few times over the course of your life and there is significant opportunity cost.

If you don't spend the $1,000 then your ongoing costs are lower (a dishwasher lasts maybe 10 years, call it $100/yr - ignoring the operating costs since you're probably using a dishwasher the same number of times per year), that could be an income stream of about $50/yr - by FIRE logic you're probably $150/yr closer to not having to work any more and you have a bigger buffer for surprises along the way. Those are some pretty significant swings for most people.

It isn't economically clever to have 2x as much personal capital on hand as you need unless you are fabulously wealthy already.

I have been advocating for multiple dishwashers for a long time, but the reality is that many times when preparing a meal you dirty more dishes than fit in a single load, and dirty dishes will still pile up in the sink.

At least 3 dishwashers are needed.

Surely this is a queuing problem, and must be solved accordingly.

After all, the universe has only two kinds of problems: those solved by queuing theory, and those solved by category theory. Or so hanging out on HN would have me believe.

You forgot to scale the infrastructure for a billion dishes and redundancy across multiple regions

The only reasonable thing to do is make every under cabinet a dishwasher.

1 dishwasher, but every cabinet or drawer is waterproof and can be servoed through a track system to be loaded directly into the dishwasher.

> Firstly, dishwashers have to live at ground level

What makes you believe that? In my professional setting (think restaurants for instance) dishwashers are actually at countertop level to improve staff efficiency.

And while I not aware of any dishwasher design that allows to put it higher than countertop level, I don't see any impossibility either: you just need it to be unloadable from below.

> In my professional setting

There's a typo here, as I wanted to say “many”. (It's more like a lapsus than a mere typo actually since I had the dishwasher of the restaurant I work at as a student in mind when I wrote this comment)

> dishwashers have to live at ground level

While less common in domestic kitchens, "raised" dishwashers are a thing. A friend of mine designed his dream kitchen and his dishwasher (just a standard domestic dishwasher) is at about hip height, next to the cabinets where dishes are stored and above the drawers that house heavier pots and pans.

That's a common professional setup, steel bench top with dishwasher with two side doors that both lift upwards at the same time.

Washers coarse sluice dishes and stack them in a circular rack on the bench, then use horizontal handle at front of washer to lift both the door on the left and the one on the right, the internal circular rack of freshly cleaned dishes is pulled out along the bench on one side, the just filled rack of dirty dishes is slid in on other side to replace, doors down, washer on, unstack clean dishes and move the empty rack back to the sink to start sluicing and stacking just arrived dirty dishes.

Repeat for three hours, then clean down kitchen and go home.

It seems a lot of these issues could be solved by just running the dishwasher after every meal.

Why do they need to be at ground level? You could elevate them if you want.

Well, I've never seen that before but I guess it's possible. But in my kitchen that would mean taking up space that's used by the countertop, boiler, or fridge. Securing it to the wall and connecting it up to the water inlet I can easily imagine running into the several thousands to carry out.

You're right. I've personally seen kitchens with dishwashers at counter level. Only in buildings that were once restaurants though.

In my kitchen I don’t have space to hang the pots and pans. If I could move a wall or a cupboard then that problem would free up a drawer and one of those fiddly corner cupboards.

Yeah, his advice fails to consider that people aren't all the same as he is. For example I like to cook, and I have a lot more dishes/pots/pans than could fit in two dishwashers. What do I do with the rest, store it on the ground?

More dishwashers, obviously.

I could hang some dishwashers on the wall!