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Overheard my neighbor say her grandma never owned a dishwasher
I was pulling weeds yesterday and heard my neighbor telling her kid that her great grandma washed everything by hand her whole life. Made me stop and think about all the tiny wars we have over loading a machine that's basically a luxury. My own mom used to cram everything in there however it fit, no rules at all. Now I see people online arguing about fork direction and whether bowls should face the center or the edges. Kinda wild how something so simple turned into this whole system of rules over just 30 or 40 years. Has anyone else noticed their older relatives just didn't care about any of this stuff?
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riley_west16d ago
Yeah that grandma thing really puts it into perspective. I grew up thinking dishwashers were just a normal thing everyone had, but it's really only been common for like two generations. Now we got people treating loading it like some sacred ritual with strict rules handed down from the dishwasher gods.
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jenny_coleman16d ago
Nah, I gotta disagree here. Those "rules" exist for a reason and they're not just some newfangled influencer trend. My mom had a dishwasher in the 80s and she was militant about how stuff went in there because she learned the hard way that loading it wrong means you're rewashing half the load by hand. Bowls facing the wrong direction trap water, forks with food still stuck on them won't get clean if they're nested together, and yeah I have seen people put wooden cutting boards and cast iron in there which is just asking for trouble. Your mom cramming stuff in however it fit probably meant she was constantly dealing with wet dishes and crusty spots. The old ladies who handwashed everything knew exactly what needed scrubbing - they just transferred that same care to the machine.
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