Did everyone seriously just wash their dishes by hand before dishwashers were common in American households and homes around the world? As we’ve gotten more comfortable and used to the efficient cleaning methods that dishwashers provide us with, it’s almost hard to believe that people once maintained clean kitchens and silverware without the convenience of a dishwasher.
Like most modern-day conveniences that we’ve gradually become used to, dishwashers weren’t always a thing. In fact, back in the day, people were forced to wash all of their dishes and kitchen items by hand – imagine how difficult it would be to explain this to a child who grew up with the strangely comforting ‘whirring’ noise of a running dishwasher.
While dishwashers are wonderful modern conveniences, they still come with their problems. When your dishwasher or other major kitchen appliance breaks, such as your oven, stovetop or refrigerator, you can rest easy knowing that Profix Appliance Service is ready to tackle the job to get your kitchen and your life back to normal operating capacity. Seeing as we take something as seemingly simple as a dishwasher rather for granted, we should give dishwashers some more credit for their awesome and efficient cleaning abilities. Let’s take a look at a few fun facts about dishwashers, because what else would there be that’s better to do?
It All Started With Chipping Fine China
Dishwashers, as we more or less know them, were invented around 1887 by Josephine Cochrane as a result of her servants constantly chipping her fine china dishware. She figured that if there was a machine that gently washed the china instead of washing the china by hand, then the china wouldn’t be chipped. Though her initial invention was hand-powered and quite different from today’s modern dishwasher with 30 different settings, Cochrane actually went on to produce dishwashers with her own company. Ever heard of KitchenAid? Yes, that’s what Cochrane’s company later became. It does make one think what we would have today if her servants were a little more careful.
Even Unloading The Dishwasher Is Too Hard
Perhaps the convenience of dishwashers has made modern human society just a little bit too lazy. In a survey conducted by dishwasher soap giant Cascade, 79 percent of people actually reran their dishwasher just to avoid unloading it. So in other others, everything inside was perfectly clean and ready to go, but participants in the survey chose to waste the water and run them again, probably giving them a false sense of productivity. It’s a shame that, while dishwashers clean themselves, they don’t automatically unload and put all of the dishes away.
Dishwashers Can Actually Save Water
This claim depends on how efficiently you wash dishes by hand (the horror!), but a typical manual dishwashing session involves turning the water on and off, using about 20 gallons or 75 liters of tap water. Often, however, people use much more than 20 gallons to manually wash dishes, especially after cooking a large meal.
Modern dishwashers, in contrast to manual dishwashing, need less than 10 gallons or 38 liters of water per average load, according to a survey conducted by the American Water Works Association. Now, you can be lazy when it comes to cleaning up your kitchen without feeling as bad about it!
Dishwashers Have a Garbage Disposal, Use It
It seems that many people don’t realize that many, if not most dishwashers have a built-in garbage disposal. This is probably a good time to plug in a ‘Profix pro tip’: run your sink’s garbage disposal right before you run your dishwasher. This way, it will wash away any garbage that’s caught in the disposal that could enter the dishwasher and block the drain line. After all, though there’s probably nothing better than the ease and convenience of a dishwasher, there’s probably nothing worse than a blocked drain line within the bowels of your dishwasher and greater kitchen plumbing system.
Show Your Dishwasher That You Care
We’re not asking for you to strike up a deep, emotional connection with your dishwasher (sorry dishwasher, you don’t have a soul), but by getting the right guys on the job when it comes to fixing your dishwasher or other broken appliances at home, you’re showing your dishwasher that you care about the quality of maintenance. After all that dishwashers do for you, the least you could do is hook it up with appliance repair service from the team at Profix Appliance. Call us today for authorized appliance service in the Los Angeles area!