Yes, I AM Tired of Learning the Hard Way (thanks for asking)

“A dishwasher is not a garbage disposal. Scrape off plates before you put them in there, you bonehead.”

Those are wise words from my dad. Wise words that I probably should have listened to years ago. However—much like a toddler who ignores parental warnings, then runs face-first into a wall—I boldly embarked on dishwasher ownership with a risqué attitude and more optimism than brains.

Turns out a dishwasher is not a garbage disposal.

Of course, I’ve never thrown chicken bones or apple cores in there—but if the occasional plate had a few peas stuck to it, or there was a bit of rice or onion in a bowl, well, why worry about it?

Why? I’m glad you asked. [I apologize in advance for all the technical terms I’ll be using, here.]

Turns out there’s a big spinning thing inside a dishwasher. It windmills around wildly, spraying water everywhere. This spinning thing does a fantastic job of cleaning dishes…as long as the tiny little holes in the spinning thing aren’t clogged with old, mushed-up bits of food.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that my dishwasher’s spinning thing gradually got clogged. Over an 18 month period, it went from producing squeaky-clean dishes that even a germaphobe would love, to producing dishes so weirdly gritty that most of them had to be hand-washed after they were machine-washed.

I asked Google for help. Google told me I was an idiot, then described—in painstaking detail—how to pick all the bits of rotten food out of the tiny holes in the spinning thing. One nauseating hour later, I’d cleaned 18 months-worth of laziness out of my dishwasher. It now—and I’m very excited about this—actually washes dishes.

So I’d just like to end with some words of wisdom from my dad. Ignore him at your peril:

“A dishwasher is not a garbage disposal. Scrape off plates before you put them in there, you bonehead.”