I have never had a dishwasher.

This isn't the greatest hardship endured by man, but sometimes I think it would be nice to simply drop the plates into that magic white box and have them pop out steaming and clean in the morning rather than have them growing mould on my work surface for a week before I get around to chiselling the now rock hard "food" off them.


The worst thing about this yearning for a dishwasher is that I had once, for one day only.

It was the beginning of my second year at Uni and as a group myself and some of my chums were moving into a new house, it was a bit of a shithole, but it had a large living room, large garden, huge kitchen and the all important dishwasher.

We had a long day carrying boxes, unpacking porn collections, building Ikea furniture and smoking more weed than is good for anybody. The evening came and we were al fairly shattered and decide an early night was in order, K who had not been smoking and was less tired proclaimed that she would stack the dishwasher. No probs we thought as we all slunk off to bed.

I was first up the morning as I had raging thirst. I stumbled to the kitchen, went back to my room to put on some clothes as I remember that I lived with people, stumbled back to the kitchen and retrieved a glass from the dishwasher. Without paying much attention I filled the glass with cool, refreshing water and took a deep gulp.

Oh good god, it felt like I had ingested the crushed bones of mummified Gandhi! I ran the tap to see what the problem was, it was running clear and fresh, how queer I thought to myself. I moved my attention to the glass which I now realised had a strange frosted appearance. I picked at the glass and white powder came away under my nail.

This really was a conundrum and when I checked inside the dish washer I found that all of the crockery, cutlery and glass wear were covered in a thin film of some sort of white powder. Gradually my housemates emerged and we all began to discuss what could have left our eating implements in such a state.

Eventually K arrived and we quizzed her on her dishwasher usage skills. She explained that she had taken the dishwasher powder from under the sink and ran the machine as the instructions indicated.

This seemed like a fairly good explanation, until someone made the salient point that none of us had brought any dishwasher powder with us. “Yes” exclaimed K “but I found some under the sink!”

She duly retrieved the dishwasher powder to show us.

It was plaster of fucking paris!

The heat from the dishwasher had baked it onto every plate, every knife and every glass; it all had to be binned as we couldn’t clean it. As for the dishwasher we tried to flush it out, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts it coughed, burped, farted and died for ever more. If we cut away the outer shell and piping I guess we would have had a perfect ceramic model of the inside of an Indesit 4200.

And that was the closest I ever came to having a dishwasher.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:15, 3 replies)

Wow that's the longest story about a dishwasher ever!
Sorry.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 26 Feb 2009, 15:24, closed)

I feel your pain
After having had a dishwasher all my life, I ended up in a house sans diswasher.......

To make matters worse, I had a toddler and an infant at the time. You try washing hundreds of bottles and sippy cups by hand while hoping you actually killed all the germs.

Thanks to that year of hell, I refuse to live anywhere without a dishwasher. I will give up all kinds of other little comoforts, but the dishwasher is not negotiable.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Thu 26 Feb 2009, 16:36, closed)

This reminds me
Of a flatmate who thought that the milk came out of the coffee machine ready-frothed. So in due form he filled the tank with milk and turned the coffee machine on. Cue overpowering stench of burnt milk throughout the house.
(Helixdaunting, Fri 27 Feb 2009, 0:48, closed)