Our Dishwasher is a Work of Art

In the Northern US, where we live, a dishwasher is rare. Dishwashers are expensive to buy and expensive to run — about $1 per load. But they are still cheaper than hand-washing dishes by hand — which is how my husband and I do it.

I was intrigued by the idea of a dishwasher that looks like a work of art and works like one too. This kind of machine has been around for decades, but no one has gotten the design quite right yet.

The main problem with our dishwasher is that it can’t hold enough dishes at once. To get 5 plates in our machine, all in different spots, you have to put them on your kitchen counter and cram them in there. You can’t really stack things, because the racks don’t go all the way to the top – so if you want to put a big bowl on the bottom, it has to be perched on the edge of another bowl or something.

I asked an engineer why this was so hard: Why can’t they make more room? The answer is that a dishwasher is supposed to be energy efficient; it doesn’t make any sense to use lots of energy for a small fraction of usage time. It would cost too much money (a dish

This is a new product category. The very idea of a dishwasher has always seemed strange, in that it requires you to be at the other end of your house when you make dinner. But now we have the kitchen counter-top dishwasher, and the floor model dishwasher, and the Amana chest-of-drawers dishwasher.

It’s not just that they are convenient; they are also beautiful objects, with curves and knobs and buttons and hinges and whatnot. The form of a dishwasher reflects its function: clean your dishes by hand if you want them to stay dirty longer.

There is no reason why they can’t continue to improve. In fact there is every reason – this is a work of art, after all.

Look at the dishwasher: what is it? It’s a box with a motor and a metal rack inside. Nothing more. Yet it has become something of a fetish object, not just to people who are willing to pay $1,400 for one, but also to engineers who have built their own miniaturized versions.

I see my dishwasher as an example of how any object can take on a life of its own if enough people treat it as an expression of their personal philosophy. Dishwashers, like all objects and technologies, can be used for good or evil.

The company’s main business is selling dishwashers. They are not a very good company; in fact, this is the kind of company that people think is a joke. They hire college seniors with no business experience to work for them so that they can claim all kinds of perks, including free housing and cars. As a result, there are sometimes problems with the dishwasher.

But as a company, the Dishwasher Group is not a joke. It has been around for years, and it has developed a reputation for making nice dishwashers: beautiful machines that last for years and take care of everything you need them to. The Dishwasher Group produces clean dishes (no matter how dirty your hands are), sprays my baby’s hair with conditioner without her ever knowing it, and even washes dried rice off your bodysuit without leaving marks on your skin — stuff like that.

The Dishwasher Group makes these machines because they believe people will pay to have them, but they make an extra margin by selling them at cost instead of charging more than the cost of materials and labor. If they charged more than the cost of materials and labor they would not be able to make a profit; but then neither would anyone else who sold dishwashers.

The

I was on a ship in the Galapagos, and a dishwasher broke down. The Captain called all hands on deck. *We need to do something,* he said.* We’re going to have to wash dishes. And we need to do it on the boat, because there isn’t any place else to do it.

The crew formed a line and started taking turns washing dishes with a metal brush, which was hard work. The crews of all the other boats gathered around to watch.

Then the Captain called me over. *You know what* he said, *this is an exceptionally good time for you to test your new dishwasher.* I looked at him blankly. *You have an entire week to test your product,* he said.* You can run it nonstop for 24 hours without stopping.*

I shook my head and gave him the “I’m not buying this” look.

*I will test your product for the rest of my life,* he said, *but I’ll be dead first.*

There is a dishwasher in my basement that I bought because it was on sale, and I don’t want to be seen buying dishwashers on sale. It’s one of those high tech models with a whirling arm that cleans the dishes by running them through some kind of watery scrubber, which makes a soft pinging sound.

The machine is fine, but the salesman was full of hot air. “It’s the most innovative new design in twenty years,” he said. “And the controls are so simple.”

He was full of hot air too: The controls are pretty complex and involve things like separate buttons for drying and sterilizing and rinsing. But they are not simple at all: they take at least 10 minutes to learn how to use properly , and even then you can’t get full use out of them.

(A few years ago I had an electric mixer that needed tweaking every 15 minutes or so.)

The thing is, it’s not just this particular machine. It’s a general principle of modern appliances: They are all designed to be as complicated as possible so there is no chance anyone will figure out a way around them or fix it themselves if something goes wrong. The best way to do that is to make it impossible

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