I'm boycotting my dishwasher

[thewop]

It's worthless!  Ugh. 

It's a 7 year old crappy Maytag.  In order for the dishes to come out clean, I have to practically put them in spotless.  I'm sorry but I will NOT wash my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher.  Clear and rinse, sure.  Put in sparkling clean, no.   If I have to put a soapy sponge on them at all I'm going to save myself a few steps and clean them then and there.  I'm not going to waste time and energy putting them in the dishwasher just because we have one.  I've cleaned it, run vinegar, tried different detergents....I'm just DONE.  I refuse to use it. 

My H thinks I have unrealistic expectations of a dishwasher.  I did not grow up with a dishwasher and I didn't have one until I moved out.  For me a dishwasher should get off the layer of food film and dry.  If it doesn't, well then maybe I do have high expectations.  My H does not think there is a dishwasher out there that will get DIRTY dishes clean. 

So....is it possible for a dishwasher to get dirty dishes clean? Does everyone put theirs in practically clean?  Is my dishwasher crappy, or am I being unreasonable? 

[mrs.jacinthe]

Your dishwasher is crappy.

You should be able to put in dirty dishes and have them come out clean. That's the point. Maybe not dried/baked on grease, but you should be able to scrape the dinner plates into the trash or disposal and then put them directly in the dishwasher. And have them be clean at the other end.

[bunnymendelbaum]

We have a +\-4 year old Jennair. Some of the plastic clips inside have broken but the thing can CLEAN! I also refuse to pre wash and dishes always come out spotless unless I stack them in there really wonky.
I have noticed that the tabs work better than liquids or powders.

[Deleted]

You're not being unrealistic.
I don't prewash or do anything extra other than scrape off giant food chunks.
My dishes come out clean almost always. The times they don't is a "dairy was being lazy and jammed as much as she could in as fast as she could issue" not an issue with how well the machine cleans. Sometimes anything overly greasy requires a rewash, but again I'm lazy about dishes.

My day to day normal cups, plates, pans, dishes are usually good to go though.

[mrs.jacinthe]

I feel like I should add that this house's dishwasher is a bottom-of-the-line Whirlpool that's almost 20 years old. And it still gets the dishes really clean. Like, sparkling. So yeah, it's not you. It's your dishwasher. Get a new one.

[vic1011]

Agree with those that say your dishwasher stinks. I don't prewash anything other than baked on crap (even then sometimes I just leave it in for a few cycles) and my dishes come out (mostly) clean. We have super hard water though, so I use a tab in the detergent hole and lemishine in the prewash space. The only time we had a problem with it is when the heating element broke. DH was able to pull it out and fix it though - no problems since.

[sierramist03]

Ugh sounds like my battle with mine until my landlord finally replaced it last fall

[Bonita]

We have a Maytag that we just got last year, dishes totally spotless. Even things that I sometimes think for sure will have to be re-washed come out clean.

We had a dishwasher like the one you are describing though, and it sucked...The guy said that that can sometimes happen if the water supply line is kinked or the water isn't hot enough - you could try running the water until it's hot before starting up the dishwasher? I know that helped for us, but it still wasn't the best solution. We just ended up getting the new one and it works great