… the dishes? (I have this problem. Definitely.)
Mona Charen explains it’s probably not the dishwasher, but the soap. She credits this detailed report by Jonathan V. Last at the Weekly Standard for helping her figure out what was wrong. (Noted: In the article Last notes that newer dishwashers have been making trade-offs in the name of efficiency, which hasn’t necessarily helped, if what you want is clean dishes. But if you had a dishwasher that did a good job, and stopped doing a good job, it’s likely because of the soap switches.) More: Last shares a couple of reader responses to his article.
And, yes, like others I tried better stacking, and adding rinse aids. I tried putting in lots more detergent. I ran the heavy wash cycle instead of normal wash. I pre-rinsed. I tried running the machine twice instead of once. I also considered calling in someone to see if somehow the plumbing had gotten plugged up. Seriously reduced water supply seemed likely, somehow. I even went into the laundry room and peered into the water softener, almost hoping that it looked broken, or out of salt. That at least would give me something to have fixed, that might fix the problem.
I don’t mind washing dishes by hand, mind you. But I don’t like losing the use of an appliance through no fault of my own. And who knows how long we might be allowed halfway decent dish detergent for hand washing, for that matter?
And, yes, I realize this is a relatively trivial problem, pale in comparison to poverty and real suffering – and of course, in the scope of eternity even real sufferings here will not matter. (I do have something of a sense of proportion.)
But it is a needless problem. And there are real reasons we try to wash old food and other stuff (like bacteria) off of dishes.
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