Am I the only one that washes dishes immediately after use? No need to even use the machine. Wash immediately after use, let them dry on rack, wipe and put away.
Have a family of 7 and get back to me on that one.
Edit: not trying to be snarky but a use case for a single person or small family breaks down quickly when you have young kids and have special diets(that require an entirely different set of dishes) then you can see where automation is useful.
On the other hand, according to the US census, as of 2016 the number of households with 7 or more family members is 1.27% while the number of households with 1 family member is 28.13%. If we take into account the households with 3 or fewer family members we are talking over 75% of the US.
I think it is completely reasonable not to consider your circumstance when giving general advice. The vast majority of people can choose a much simpler solution because they have much simpler problems. It's interesting to hear what people in your situation need to do, but I wouldn't expect many people to relate because they have no such experience.
I agree with you, but you are using the wrong numbers.
Sure, only 23% of households have 4+ members, but they contain 44% of all Americans. Likewise, the 1.3% of households with 7+ members contain 6.2% of Americans.
And there are more people in households of 6+ members than in single-member households.
(source: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/families/cps-20... where tables C1 and A1 give a total 2016 population of 318579k. Table H1 gives numbers of households with 1-6 members, which, by multiplication, hold 298913k people. The remaining 19666k people must be in 7+ member households. This matches table AVG1's 2.53 people/household and surprisingly implies that the 1.6M households with 7+ people contain 12 people on average.)
Is the purchasing power of a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) any higher than someone living alone, specifically when talking about purchasing home appliances?
I mean occasionally my wife and I will both purchase bread on the way home resulting in us having a lot of bread, but I can't think of a time we both accidentally bought a refrigerator or oven on the same weekend.
Well, a decent chunk of people living alone are probably renting, so that changes the whole appliance-purchasing dynamics already, but to directly answer your question - yes? The increasingly common dual income family has more income than a single person, and furthermore benefits from the ability to share certain costs efficiently - how would that not result in higher purchasing power?
Statistics for disposable income by family size is hard to get (I don't think the US census measures that). My gut feeling is that dual income, no kids families are going to be at the very top because not only are kids incredibly expensive, but not having kids means that you can concentrate on work. Having said that, family size will also skew around age so it's really hard to say. I'll just say that I've never met a family with kids that isn't concerned about money.
But even having more money, will people buy robot appliances? Again, my gut feeling is that singles are actually more likely to buy things like that because the downside of making an ineffective purchase is dramatically lower.
I know that my parents started making me do dishes around age 8 or 9, and I guess I hadn't really considered if that was normal or not until now. Is it normal?
It's normal. My parents didn't have a dishwasher until I moved out, so I was made to do it or help. Before remotes I also had to get up and turn the channel for my dad. All these time saving devices really help kids the most ;)
I don't know if it's normal, but I was washing dishes at a similar age and later cooking for the family as a teenager.
My children are 3 and 5 which is why they're not much help with washing/drying and why the bedtime routine is more involved - bath, drying, brushing teeth, packing up, reading, answering questions about why they have to go to bed, why it's still light outside, how they are actually tired and so on.
I didn't mind doing laundry when I lived by myself.
Then I started living with my wife. She has laundry preferences (among other things) different from mine (whoa!).
Then we had a kid. And another. And another. Not a family of 7, but I think I know where you're coming from. It was a walk in the park, individually. A complete non-issue.
Note that this is almost certainly less efficient in terms of time, water use and energy use, than using a modern dishwasher.
The other benefit we find of using a dishwasher in a family is that the dishwasher produces a consistent and good result as compared to a 8-12 year old trying to hand-wash, and kids can be trained to competently unload things if you store plates and glasses "low". So the aggregate effort for parents is almost zero.
I'm thinking that the bulk of people giving advice like yours live in smaller-scale households and don't entertain, or don't entertain in a way that generates any dishes. I think a dishwasher would probably be a bit weird if I lived alone, as it would take ages to fill with dirty dishes and I would probably wind up having to retrieve stuff from it all the time.
If your kids are rubbish at washing up, which miraculously results in their being exempted from this thankless task, you may be witnessing what Scott Adams identifies as "strategic incompetence" :-) I suspect my wife of the same tactic, as the thought of her greasy half-washed efforts on the draining board always gets me to volunteer to do the dishes every night.
Being rubbish at a task, at our house, results in you getting more. My youngest's crappy/lazy vacuuming job on his own room, for instance, earned him some "practice". :-)
We just don't have that much hand-washing to do. They are still rubbish at the task even when made to do it.
Household of one checking in. I eat at home maybe 6 or 8 times a week.If I eat breakfast at home, I'll usually just drop the bowl or plate int he sink and fill it with water, then wash it while doing my dinner plate if I eat at home that night, or while waiting on the coffee machine the next morning. Mostly I wash dinner cooking utensils as I go, and my cutlery and crockery after I'm done (Friday or Saturday nights if I've eaten at home, they'll sometimes sit in the sink overnight...)
When I entertain, I deal with things as required. (Admittedly not often...)
I used to do this. Then I moved into a place with a brand new (efficient) dishwasher and did some rough experiments comparing the water usage. Now I just run the dishwasher every few days. It also has the added bonus of not needing to stack up stuff to dry.
Slightly unrelated, but depending on where/what you moved into, upgrading toilets to efficient ones* also makes a big different, for relatively little coin.
*I mean the efficient ones (a gallon of golf balls with 1 gallon of water marketing gimmicks, etc), not the "low flow" crappy ones.
That statistic of efficiency probably deals with averages and we should certainly not measure anything against American averages because American waste levels are absurd.
Generally the statistic is based on studies comparing a full dishwasher to washing the same stuff in a sink. The "just in time" handwashing described above is probably more or less the worst case from an efficiency point of view, though.
I think that's a case of chronic pain seeming less bad than acute pain. Cleaning dishes one by one is probably the least time efficient method. It's just never enough at one time for you to notice.
With a relatively new dishwasher you can put your dishes in completely dirty with no rinsing. They're a solid time savings for sure.
I agree that washing dishes immediately after use reduces the effort to almost nothing. I try to do so as much as possible. Laundry is not as precise.
I can’t immediately run today’s clothes through my washer and dryer alone without wasting resources. I also need to remove my laundry from the dryer soon after it finishes if I want to avoid wrinkled clothes. For these reasons, I only do laundry in large loads and I have to schedule around the task. This is even more of an issue for people who do not have laundry machines in their homes.
I used to do that. It works great while you're single, could work with a like minded partner, but is very challenging for the first couple years of having kids :)
There’s frequent times where I’m eating, about to wash my dishes, and something comes up at work (PagerDuty for example). This happens more times than I care to admit, and as a result I end up just chucking them into the dishwasher. Or if I have to leave in the morning and I’m running late, or if I had a large gathering of people.
I do too, with the help of scrubber with detergent (https://www.amazon.com/Cleaning-Scrubber-Dispenser-Dishwash-...) it's a 10 second job. Being single means my plate and bowl can simply sit in the rack until next use. It's not a significant time sink, I spend way more than that cooking meals in the first place.
Similarly, washing clothes is not a significant time sink, 99% of the process is done by a machine unattended, I only need to collect the clothes, transfer them from the washer to the drier and put them away afterwards. Or put them on a hanger to dry if they require ironing.
That's about 25% of the US population. Those of us raising families do quite a lot of labour every day, at least while the kids are small.
A quick mental estimate says daily dishes for family of 4, 2 of whom are preschoolers, is about 12X my singleton workload. Also laundry every day at least one load, maybe two.
Wash-dry-fold services are some of the best dollars I spend. For about $1/pound, I drop my stuff off before work, pick it up at the end of the day, and it's all taken care of.
The scrubber wand changed my life. Dishes went from being a complete pain to being tolerable and quick. It seems like such a simple thing, but it really does change the game.
Indeed, the dishwasher is the first appliance that I'd be willing to give up, especially if the space were occupied by a well designed drying rack with drain. I guess I could use the dishwasher for that purpose, and not run it.
We're a family of 4. My trick is that I'm super damn quick.
Edit: Interesting to see this get voted up and down. I suppose because it appears to have a holier-than-thou tone. I don't really feel that way because I struggled to learn this stuff the hard way. I'm just hopeful someone will feel encouraged to try it.
Not the only one. Admittedly I don't have kids, but I'm familiar with family life and I don't think this is really that much of a problem.
I think a lot of people suffer from the problem of not being educated about how to do basic things around the house. They make huge problems for themselves. For dishes, the main key is just not to ever have dirty dishes. Definitely, do not store dirty dishes in the sink. Not only does it stop you from cooking, but it means you are almost certain to break stuff when you do eventually wash it (because there is no room).
The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need. Instead, as you cook, clean. If you are in a typical North American kitchen, box off 90% of it and constrain yourself to an area that includes the sink, an area the size of your cutting board and your stove/oven. Hopefully the sink, board and stove are right next to each other. Keep a small dish of hot water and detergent right next to the sink with a sponge or cloth in it. Replenish occasionally (I usually use the kettle since it is faster and more efficient than trying to get small amounts of hot water out of the tap -- I lived 5 years in a house without hot running water and never missed it!).
Whenever you use anything, clean it right away. Also put it away. Specifically: pots, knives and cutting boards should never be dirty. Get a knife board (or similar). Clean your knife and put it away every time you use it. The 2 seconds you save by putting your knife on the board (or other hazardous place) is not worth it. Pots should be cooking something, storing something, or spotless. Similarly, your board should be in use or clean.
Try to make due (or 95% of what you do) with a frying pan, 1 small pot and one large pot. Then reuse these as you are cooking. Also, buy 1 good knife and do everything with it. Think of these things as being in your cache. Make it a cache miss to swap out to something else. Obviously you will occasionally need specialised tools, but try to keep these really infrequent. Finally, wash the kitchen before you serve the meal. It sounds crazy, but you should be able to do it in less than 5 minutes, so the food can wait. Not only will your kitchen always be clean, but you will dramatically increase the speed at which you can cook. It is really astounding how much better it is.
At that point, the only thing you ever need to wash are the dishes you are eating off of. If you are a couple, then it takes virtually no time. If you are a family, then this is good "family time" (teaching children that working is part of life is not the most terrible thing you can do).
For laundry, my wife does the laundry every day that's sunny. We store dirty laundry in the machine. (Hint: Always leave the machine door open if you can. A dry machine is a not-moldy-machine). As soon as we get up my wife turns on the machine. After breakfast she hangs the laundry outside. Total time: 5 minutes. When she gets home at the end of the day she folds the laundry. I work from home so if it starts to rain, or is too windy, I take the laundry in and fold it. Total time: 5 minutes.
When we lived in London (i.e. a-not-sunny-place), we hung everything indoors -- just make sure that the room is well ventilated, or you can cause problems with moisture. It sometimes took 2 days for some things to dry thoroughly, but you can quickly put a few things in the dryer for a couple of minutes if you don't want to wait -- normally takes less than 5 minutes to finish it off.
I used to wash all the laundry by hand (really)! Before breakfast, soak. Before taking a shower, drain and re-soak with detergent. After having a shower (not having clothes on means you don't have to worry about getting wet), wash and wring out the detergent. Rinse and soak in rinsing water. After getting dressed, brushing teeth, etc, wring out the water, then lay the clothes out onto towels. Roll up the towels with the clothes inside. Twist the towels to transfer the water into the towels. Total time: about 10 minutes. Downside: you need a couple of extra towels that you need to hang.
Now, the above is hard work if you have a lot of clothes, but it's practically trivial if you are doing it every day (I still do this when travelling). To be honest, a modern washing machine is stupidly efficient and does quite a good job, so might as well use it, but it's useful to realise how little hassle it is to do it by hand -- as long as you are doing it every day!
This "wash dishes during cooking and after eating" recipe sounds like just washing in two batches, interrupted by eating. The post-meal dishes will include many of the cooking pots/bowls/cutting boards, because you served the food from them. And many people like to kick back after dinner or go to work after breakfast, not jump right into dishwashing.
The extra "during cooking" dishwashing steps of intermediate pots, knives, cutting boards, grating boards, and other intermediate cooking tools & pots, blender parts etc may
satisfy a sense of order in the kitchen but it's but
that's not enough to sway most people over.
And now the dishwasher feels like a good idea again. And
you can accumulate dishes in it all day, so it also handles
the between meals glasses, coffee mugs, french presses, sandwich making dishes etc.
> Specifically: pots, knives and cutting boards should never be dirty. Get a knife board (or similar). Clean your knife and put it away every time you use it. The 2 seconds you save by putting your knife on the board (or other hazardous place) is not worth it. Pots should be cooking something, storing something, or spotless. Similarly, your board should be in use or clean.
This is what I do, but everything else goes in the dishwasher. :)
> Not the only one. Admittedly I don't have kids, but I'm familiar with family life and I don't think this is really that much of a problem.
Yeah, it is much of a problem. Once you get one kid, your dishwasher will be used more than merely 1/3 more, as will your laundry machine.
Every time I clean a pan or dish or fork or knife I use water, soap, and I gotta let it dry (which uses a rack which takes up space) after which I can soak up the remaining water and put it away. If I'm already doing that, it goes in one go, called dish washing or I put it in this spot where I put in a tablet and let it work for a few hours, called a dishwasher. Which is, incidentally, very space efficient and consumes very little time. I'm a proponent of reusing dishes, glasses, etc but with cats I don't find it very hygienic.
You want to wash your dishes for 5 minutes after you finished cooking your meal. Well, that's your choice. I want to cook my food, serve it with the family, and watch them enjoy the food and (potentially) receive feedback or even redo parts or grab additional spoon or sauce or whatever and perhaps most importantly for myself: enjoy the food I made, served hot, with my family. To hell I would stand 5 more minutes in the kitchen cleaning my mess up. That's for after dinner! And cleaning it up means putting it in the dishwasher.
> The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need.
Then you get more pots, or you put your dishwasher on more often, or you wash the pot(s) by hand. We, or well generally my partner rather, do the latter but we also have enough pots and pans to easily last for a couple of days. They're washed in one go, not in multiple. I think time-wise, that's more efficient, regardless of you saying is better (not sure why actually).
Putting my clothes in my garden is a sure way to attract cats, thieves, and bad weather. I don't have a dryer (am considering getting one given a baby is due). Putting clothes on doors and a rack seems to work well, though does require ventilation indeed. I can also recommend to use vinegar as fabric softener.
Your advice is interesting and inspiring, even more so for road warriors and the like but its just less practical than using machines for the tough work. Why? It saves us time and effort. Time and effort is what you sorely lack when you get kids. You don't have kids, I suspect you underestimate the impact of having even one (young) child. If you have a baby you can say bye bye to your sleep rhythm. Do you think I'd love to do dishes regularly between my sleeps? No way, I'd rather have the dishwasher on, let it dry (you gotta keep it open to let it dry via environment), and be done with it.
I live alone, but I still don't like doing dishes manually, especially after having gone through the effort of cooking, I'd rather chill out a bit after I finished eating.
I just throw them all in the machine and run the machine once a week, way less effort, way less time wasted.
I, too, wash dishes right after use. No accumulating piles and it takes about 10 seconds to do that. Nowadays I actually have a dishwasher in my new apartment but I have used it zero times!
I have been programming for over 20 years, most of it in FP land. ML is tractable, a beautiful prism through which one can peek at Computer Science as a subject, but it has a frustrating lack of _practical_ tooling and beginner-friendly community. For anything outside basic I/O, you will need to dust off compiler-specific extensions, most of them last used on "Un*x Workstations".
Just look at the Basis library. Safe to say it's nowhere near Racket, Scala, Clojure, Kotlin, ...
It's a tough sell if the language has no hope of industry adoption. Also tough to use a language, especially one with type inference, without editor support.
Maybe some classes are just that good. A lot aren't, I'm guessing, and you would want to at least take away something you could use in the real world from them.
Or more likely, some imaginative fanboy wrote it. Like much of the espionage / military / conspiracy articles. There is a heavy demand for literature that makes people feel knowledgeable and significant.
Use Nuxt to get started.
https://nuxtjs.org/