Life without a dishwasher when you cook a lot?

[Jouer]

My wife and I also do not have a dishwasher. But we do have a double sink - one for washing and one houses a drying rack. Our nozzle has a couple of settings which is nice when rinsing stuff off pots and pans.

Our strategy is similar to others:

- efficiently use dishes - same glass all day (or longer), don't use two bowls when one will do, etc.
- clean as we go - If I am cooking, my wife is the assistant. If she is cooking, I am the assistant. (this varies based on what we are good at making)
- rinse pans as soon as we finish cooking and then wash them after we finish eating

Lunch and breakfast dishes take less than 5 minutes to wash...dinner may take 10 minutes. I mean, aside from pots/pans, we're only washing 2 plates, two glasses, two forks, two knives.

Sounds great!

Now take away one person for two of the meals, add two F5 tornadoes bent upon eating or destroying everything in the kitchen, add in wanting to have a life outside the kitchen, and tada! suddenly a dishwasher is one very reasonable, time saving investment in ones own sanity.

OP has no kids and no mention of one of them being away.

I will say having a dishwasher was nice in the past. Our current house just happens to not have one and installing one would involve messing with our fancy-pants counter, which I'm not willing to do. 10 minutes a day is not worth $400 a month....unless I'm on the wrong web site.

[Sailor Sam]

My wife and I also do not have a dishwasher. But we do have a double sink - one for washing and one houses a drying rack. Our nozzle has a couple of settings which is nice when rinsing stuff off pots and pans.

Our strategy is similar to others:

- efficiently use dishes - same glass all day (or longer), don't use two bowls when one will do, etc.
- clean as we go - If I am cooking, my wife is the assistant. If she is cooking, I am the assistant. (this varies based on what we are good at making)
- rinse pans as soon as we finish cooking and then wash them after we finish eating

Lunch and breakfast dishes take less than 5 minutes to wash...dinner may take 10 minutes. I mean, aside from pots/pans, we're only washing 2 plates, two glasses, two forks, two knives.

Sounds great!

Now take away one person for two of the meals, add two F5 tornadoes bent upon eating or destroying everything in the kitchen, add in wanting to have a life outside the kitchen, and tada! suddenly a dishwasher is one very reasonable, time saving investment in ones own sanity.

Why ain't the tornadoes washing the dishes? Too young? Otherwise, bring on the child labour!

[PFHC]

Why ain't the tornadoes washing the dishes? Too young? Otherwise, bring on the child labour!

Yes for the four year old, nope for the six year old. That said, they do help clean and clear the table and kitchen.

Just to be clear, we cook 95% of our meals. I have been cooking for 30 years, my wife for 10, and we understand fully the principle of clean as you go. That's why there is very little hand washing when the meal is done. We only have four bowls, four plates, and 8 of each piece of silverware. We have a handful of pots, pans, and baking trays. What do we wash? The plates and bowls from the meal, silverware, cookware, small appliances (blender, etc.), food storage containers (we make a lot of our food ahead of time), and drinking glasses. Enough to fill the dishwasher once a day, sometimes twice (if we cook a big meal).

That said, with the dishwasher, cleaning after meals for four has gone from an hour, or more, a meal, to 10 minutes at the end of every meal. That is the facts. That 2.5 - 3 hours we've gained back in our life is more than worth it. Also, I work as a merchant mariner. I am on a ship for four weeks, then home for four weeks. So, half the year, my wife is a single mother to two small kiddos. She is a busy person during that time. Saving her three hours a day, and a metric fuckton of stress, is utterly priceless.

And that $400/mo number is not a reality for us. Our entire electrical bill for the month is less than $100. Our water is free (well). I would say dishes maybe cost us $20/mo. For our family of four, in all sincerity, the dishwasher has been voted as the best purchase we have made in the last four years.

So, there you are. We have considered the cost and benefits of the DW, and the benefits win by a lightcentury. Take it or leave it, that's where we're at.

Now that I'm all done being defensive and petty, to answer the OPs question, before kids, I went ten years renting without having a dishwasher. Did not care. I most certainly would not make it a requirement, especially at the cost of paying higher rent for superfluous benefits. As you rent, get what you can afford in an area close to work. If you chose to buy, determine whether you are willing to pay the premium for the dishwasher.

[tweezers]

We have two kids, and I swear to you, buying a dishwasher was been the best time saver on the planet. I would never go back to being dishwasherless. We honestly cleared up three hours everyday. Three hours that we have used to help start what is shaping up to be a successful side gig.

I haven't read all of the replies, but this. Exactly.  We cook everything from scratch and didn't have a dishwasher for several years.  Washing dishes was just always part of our day.  Our new house has a dishwasher and we easily added 2+ hours to our day by not doing dishes.  I am thankful for it every day and wouldn't go without one (at least until the kids are out of the house).

[elaine amj]

Hmmm...we started out married life with no dishwasher. hubs did all the dishes. My mom then insisted that we get one and bought us one. He never learned to load it properly so I handled the dishwasher loading. (that thing created more work for me lol!). Nowadays, hubs and I are cooking a LOT more. We now use the dishwasher about once a week. The rest of the time, its a drying rack. He just doesn't trust it and prefers to wash by hand. Sometimes, if I have a lot of gunky stuff, even I find it easier to wash it all by hand, even if it is 2 sinkfuls of dishes. Like many, I don't find it a huge time savings - takes me only a little longer to wash by hand than it does to load the dishwasher.

Then again, I don't load the dishwasher as I go - we find that stuff that sits out in the dishwasher is hard to get clean. So dishes get stacked in the sink (with water in between) to soak before I load. By that point, it's only a little more work to handwash.

[Sailor Sam]

Why ain't the tornadoes washing the dishes? Too young? Otherwise, bring on the child labour!

Yes for the four year old, nope for the six year old. That said, they do help clean and clear the table and kitchen.

Just to be clear, we cook 95% of our meals. I have been cooking for 30 years, my wife for 10, and we understand fully the principle of clean as you go. That's why there is very little hand washing when the meal is done. We only have four bowls, four plates, and 8 of each piece of silverware. We have a handful of pots, pans, and baking trays. What do we wash? The plates and bowls from the meal, silverware, cookware, small appliances (blender, etc.), food storage containers (we make a lot of our food ahead of time), and drinking glasses. Enough to fill the dishwasher once a day, sometimes twice (if we cook a big meal).

That said, with the dishwasher, cleaning after meals for four has gone from an hour, or more, a meal, to 10 minutes at the end of every meal. That is the facts. That 2.5 - 3 hours we've gained back in our life is more than worth it. Also, I work as a merchant mariner. I am on a ship for four weeks, then home for four weeks. So, half the year, my wife is a single mother to two small kiddos. She is a busy person during that time. Saving her three hours a day, and a metric fuckton of stress, is utterly priceless.

And that $400/mo number is not a reality for us. Our entire electrical bill for the month is less than $100. Our water is free (well). I would say dishes maybe cost us $20/mo. For our family of four, in all sincerity, the dishwasher has been voted as the best purchase we have made in the last four years.

So, there you are. We have considered the cost and benefits of the DW, and the benefits win by a lightcentury. Take it or leave it, that's where we're at.

Now that I'm all done being defensive and petty, to answer the OPs question, before kids, I went ten years renting without having a dishwasher. Did not care. I most certainly would not make it a requirement, especially at the cost of paying higher rent for superfluous benefits. As you rent, get what you can afford in an area close to work. If you chose to buy, determine whether you are willing to pay the premium for the dishwasher.

I'm sorry if my post came across as snarky. I intended it to be humorous, but I might have missed the mark. I don't really have a dog in the fight. Growing up, my family always had a dishwasher. As an adult I've cycled through a lot of apartments, some with a washer and some without. I tend to forget the dishwasher is available because my volume of dishes is low, and not because but I see any moral superiority in hand washing. It's just a habit I got into.

[LindseyC]

I cook a lot, but tend to cook smart, so generally make at least a few meals out of one cooking session. I'm also one person, so less dishes again.

I have never had a dishwasher. When I designed and renovated my kitchen if didn't even occur to me to plan a space for one. I did however put in a giant farmers, double sink. I wash on one side and dry (with a rack) in the other. I never towel dry my dishes.

Breakfast dishes I rinse and leave in the sink until dinner time. I then wash dishes while I am cooking dinner and packing the next day's lunch. After dinner I finish the remaining dishes and leave them all to dry overnight. Each morning it takes me about two minutes to put away all the dry dishes.

I don't really consider dishes to be much of a chore.  I like to listen to music while I am in the kitchen so that makes it more pleasant. I find if I just consistently clean my kitchen every night and keep things in a specific place with no clutter, then the kitchen always feels clean even if a few cups are in the sink to be washed.

[PFHC]

I'm sorry if my post came across as snarky. I intended it to be humorous, but I might have missed the mark. I don't really have a dog in the fight. Growing up, my family always had a dishwasher. As an adult I've cycled through a lot of apartments, some with a washer and some without. I tend to forget the dishwasher is available because my volume of dishes is low, and not because but I see any moral superiority in hand washing. It's just a habit I got into.

No need to apologize, SS! I was feeling a bit sensitive when I replied. I should have just called the wahbulance and ordered a wamburger and some french cries instead of writing that response.

[Fishindude]

Wash dishes as you go, don't let them accumulate.   Soon as you are done with something, hot water scrub and rinse with a little soap, then prop it up in a dish drainer rack.

Also ...... Don't use so many damn dishes !
You don't need measuring spoons, a one cup measuring cup does all, substitute cutting board & knife instead of stupid multi part food processors & choppers, immediately clean the pan you fried bacon in, then use it for eggs rather than getting out another.   

My wife and daughter cook a meal and wind up with a sink piled two feet high with every imaginable item dirty, then a huge mess to clean up at the end.
I can cook same meal with a fraction of the dishes, cleaning as I cook and have almost no dirty preparation dishes or utensils dirty at the end.

[Kaminoge]

We cook pretty much all meals at home (dinner each night and then extra food to take for lunch). For the first time in my life I actually have a dishwasher. I've never switched it on. I just don't see the point. Clean up time is minimal, and I always clean as I cook anyway. I put the dishes in a drying rack and if they don't fit I just sit them on tea towels on the bench. I wash at night and then each morning part of my routine is putting away the dry dishes (and in case you think you don't have time to do that it should be noted that I get up at 4:45am each working day so I have time to do things like this).

The dishwasher situation is actually a bit of a joke. My employer (who rents the apartment) insisted that my land lady put in a dish washer, a dryer, air conditioners in each bedroom and in the living room and also an alarm system.

I made her disable the alarm system after about a month. I've never switched on any of the other appliances (I bought a fan which is more than sufficient for this climate). So I always joke with her that at least when I move out she'll be able to sell all the appliances "as new".

We never had a dishwasher growing up and it never seemed like an issue to me. Ironically my parents (who haven't had any kids at home for over 20 years) now have a dishwasher and love it.