Thursday, October 11, 2012

Shaming the Dishwasher

In general,  I am very thankful for electrical appliances.  I often feel a sense of gratification after loading up my washer, putting a cake in the oven, or turning on the vacuum cleaner.  I know that when I come back, I will have a clean load of clothing, a delicious cake, or a clean carpet.   


However, it's been a long time since I've felt that way about the dishwasher.  Now, when I load it up, I taunt it, "What are you going to leave caked on my dishes this time?"  I even spend extra time rinsing off all the little particles of food so it will just have to finish off the miniscule traces that I've left behind.  "There, you stupid, lazy, good-for-nothin', brackin' frackin' piece of worthless junk.  I washed the whole dang thing by hand!  Could you at least sanitize it for me???"  You might suggest that I talk nicer to it, but believe me, I've tried that.  And I've tried cleaning it on a regular basis - running vinegar through it, running bleach through it, running it empty so it can wash away any hidden grime - but to no avail.  It's still just a 90-lb. weakling.  I still have greasy dishes.  Sediment.  Baked on gunk.

I often end up washing many things by hand, and only putting the "sure" things into the dishwasher, like drinking cups. . . .that had only been used for water.

Here is a list of things that I believe that my dishwasher can no longer remove:

gravy
ketchup
mustard
mayonnaise
salad dressing
peanut butter
jelly
milk
eggs
oatmeal
applesauce 
frosting
chocolate
grease
oil
shortening   
butter
pudding
jello
soup
cream cheese
guacamole
refried beans
bananas
smoothies
yogurt
ice cream
potatoes
spaghetti sauce
custard
mousse
mashed potatoes

Here is a list of things that I know, for a fact, that my dishwasher can remove:

Cool Whip

In today's tough economy, we can't just go out and buy a new appliance, especially when the old one still "works" (and I hope you know that I use that term in the most sarcastic way possible).  So I've been left trying to finesse the piece of scrap (I wanted to leave the "s" off that word, but I didn't want to offend anyone) that is wasting space in my kitchen.  Still, nothing.

Finally, I've resorted to this.  Please don't think I'm being too harsh.  It's just that I've tried everything else. 



As I tried to take this picture this morning, my daughter walked right in front of the camera.  I snapped at her, "Can't you see I'm trying to take a picture here???"  My other daughter leaned over and whispered, "I think Mom has gone off the deep end."  

Obviously, they have no idea how maddening this situation is.

4 comments:

  1. This was happening to me at another house of ours years back and I called the appliance repair man because my dishwasher MUST be broken! The repair man came and took appart the bottom of the inside of my dishwasher cleaned it out while holding up some of his findings like a tooth pick, lego, cherry pit,etc. Then wrote up the bill for over $100.00!

    So, this time when our dishwasher at this house was doing the same thing, I googled something like: "taking apart inside of dishwasher to clean it" and found a youtube video showing me how to do it. We did it! AND saved $100.00! It really helped but didn't make it a perfect dishwasher just a good dishwasher!

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  2. I am in full agreement with you, Jen. Mine is suffering from the same problem. I often wonder why I even bother putting the dishes in the dishwasher since I'll just have to wash most of them by hand afterwards. Unpatiently counting the days until Christmas when I'll have gift money to buy a replacement.

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  3. That's so funny. You are such a great comedy writer, Jen.

    I'm trying to solve your problem though. I seem to remember we had the same issue at one point, and like Heidi's it was because a glass had broken in there, and some little pieces of glass were keeping it from functioning properly.

    Ours is now working again pretty well, the only issue is that it is so old that the little wire holders are all rusting and breaking off, so I can't pack the stuff in there very well. However, I'll say this, for a WHOLE MONTH I was under the misapprehension that our dishwasher was broken - as in, would not turn on. I did every dish by hand, until the day when my guardian angel (must be) prompted me to "try it again, Stupid-head" and I did, and it went on. Beats me. I was too relieved to worry about why I had that month of hell.

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  4. Call me stupid, but this is our second dishwasher since we bought the house nearly 10 years ago, and this time I opted for a Maytag(quality, right?!) vs the rebranded piece of crap Kenmore that we had the first time...I thought the Maytag repairman was supposed to be a fat, old guy drooling over his desk phone because he didn't have anything to do??

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