Dishwasher Shaming. Is That A Thing? It Should Be.

Our dishwasher was bought brand new when we built the house nine years ago. It was a Maytag, and I had high expectations for it. I guess nothing lasts forever, though, and eventually even a Maytag dies. I remember those commercials of the Maytag repair man being so bored because those appliances just last and last and laaaaaast. They say the older you get, the faster time flies by. They're so very right on that. As a kid, summer stretched out out forever, and now I'm having a hard time fathoming that its 2013 when Y2K is still fresh in my mind. Just hush with that talk of the fact that two of my own kids aren't even 13 years old yet.

Can life just slow down a bit? Please?

Our Maytag has had it's share of problems over the years. But the last straw was the door latch. It stopped latching. The door would just pop open after the wash cycle started. Water sprayed everywhere. I shoved the door closed, turned the washer off to stop the water from leaking out, and fiddled with the latch for a while until it decided to be, you know, latched. After I manhandled it a bit to show it who was boss, it decided to then stay closed and simply wash dishes as it was designed to do. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. The thing didn't wash dishes all that well in its geriatric years either. We battled the film and the gunk and so many other things, yet I was too stubborn to just hand wash even though that's pretty much what I was doing anyway. But the door finally won the battle. It opened during the wash cycle, I closed it, it opened, I closed it, I turned off the washer and closed the door, and it instantly popped right back open as if to say, "you're not going to win this battle."

Clearly, I wasn't going to win the battle. Instead, I won the war. I bought a new dishwasher. Our old one is sitting on the patio. I'm going to leave it there for a few days just to shame it. Is there a website for Dishwasher Shaming? Because I have a submission.

So I learned a whole lot while shopping for a new appliance. First of all, I learned that dishwashers have come a long way in the past decade. The features they're touting now are mind blowing, if you're into appliances. An adjustable top rack? Sweet. A steam option to soften baked on foods? Sign me up! But I had priorities, and my biggest one was capacity. With a family of 7(ish), we have a lot of dishes to wash.

And that's something else that I learned. I live in the world of We Have A Large Family, and simply cannot compute when I read things like the energy statement on the dishwasher tag that said, "based on the national average of running 4 times weekly." Dude, sometimes I run my dishwasher twice daily just to keep the sink full of dishes from encroaching onto the counters. If I skip a day, we run the risk of not only having zero counter space to work with (in a kitchen full of nothing but counter space), but running out of things like silverware and cups. It's not pretty when I let more than 15 hours go between loads. I learned that we don't eat out nearly enough is what I learned. Sheesh.

So we have a snappy new dishwasher that's not a Maytag, has a large and roomy interior, has a steam feature to get dried foods off so much easier, and actually takes the job of cleaning dishes seriously. We have clean dishes, yo. Its the simple things in life that make me happy. But sadly, I also learned that the days of $200 dishwashers are a thing of the last decade. The wallet screamed OUCH.