Dishwasher Disputes, Settled

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Speaker 12 From the New York Times, you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.

Speaker 12 Hey, everyone, it's The Wirecutter Show. I'm Kyra Blackwell.
I'm Christine Sear-Clissette. And I'm Rosie Guerin.
And we work at Wirecutter, the product recommendation site from the New York Times.

Speaker 12 Each week, we bring you expert advice from our newsroom of 140 journalists who review everyday products that will make your life better.

Speaker 12 This episode of The Wirecutter Show is called Dishwasher Disputes Settled.

Speaker 12 Kyra and Christine. Uh-oh.
Oh, she's using her adult voice. Her serious voice.

Speaker 12 Today, on the podcast, we are discussing the appliance responsible for a great number of divorces in America. Any guesses? I really have.
The refrigerator. The refrigerator.

Speaker 12 No, I think it's got to be something like the washer. It's obviously the dishwasher.
Oh, duh.

Speaker 12 In my experience, every marriage consists of two distinctive people. And you're either one or the other.
You're either the white glover or you're the raccoon. Okay, stay with me.
I'm here.

Speaker 12 The white glover loads a dishwasher like they're in a high-end antique shop. Meticulous, organized, everything in its place.
And then there's me, the raccoon.

Speaker 12 The raccoon takes its little paws with its little opposable thumbs and tosses those dishes in any empty available space it sees. Efficient,

Speaker 12 inspired, creative. Infuriating.

Speaker 12 Top rack, bottom rack, the air quotes silverware basket. We don't discriminate.
So in my experience, again, in my experience, the white glover tends to take umbrage with the raccoon.

Speaker 12 Well, the raccoon is simply happy to be sharing a life with the white glover. And now, somehow, I'm no longer talking about dishwashers.
You know what?

Speaker 12 It's It's funny because I know that this is like a big deal in a lot of people's relationships. Sure is.

Speaker 12 It's not in my marriage, but I think that's because we maybe are on the spectrum somewhere between the raccoon and the white glover. Like we're well matched.

Speaker 12 You must have something that's a metaphor for your marriage. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, there's probably other things and we'll talk about those in other episodes. But I, yeah, I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 12 Kyra, do you have this issue in your life? Oh, yeah. I fight with myself all the time about the dishwasher that I don't have.
Oh, just for yourself, right, right. Because you don't have a dishwasher.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 12 But when I'm in other people's homes, including my partners, I feel like as long as the dishes are clean, nobody's fussing. Yeah.

Speaker 12 I think I'm just so grateful to have a dishwasher because I lived without one for about 15 years, my first 15 years living in the city.

Speaker 12 So just having a dishwasher is just like this joyous, wonderful thing in my life. And so you guys are not going to be fighting over who's loading it because you're just too grateful for that.

Speaker 12 We're just like, oh my gosh, we don't have to do it. That's great.

Speaker 12 But in all seriousness, today we're actually going to dive deep into dishwashers. Like, how do they actually work? How can you get yours to work even better?

Speaker 12 And we're going to talk about detergents. We're going to talk about all that and more with none other than Andrea Barnes, Wirecutter's staff writer, covering all types of cleaning appliances.

Speaker 12 You may remember her from our first episode on laundry. She's a total gem and is going to be able to definitively tell us, Rosie, how you are supposed to load your dishwasher.
I can't wait.

Speaker 12 Did you win this fight?

Speaker 12 Not a chance. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 The Wirecutter Show is supported by Rocket Mortgage.

Speaker 3 Your home is an active investment, not a passive one.

Speaker 4 And with Rocket Mortgage, you can put your home equity to work right away. When you unlock your home equity, you unlock new doors for your family.

Speaker 7 Renovations, extensions, even buying your next property.

Speaker 5 get started today with smarter tools and guidance from real mortgage experts find out how at rocketmortgage.com rocket mortgage llc licensed in 50 states nmls consumeraccess.org 3030

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Speaker 12 Welcome back to the Wirecutter Show. Our guest today is Andrea Barnes.
She's a staff writer at Wirecutter who specializes in reporting on large appliances like washers, dryers, and dishwashers.

Speaker 12 It's like the holy trinity. Andrea was our first ever guest on the Wirecutter Show back in August when she talked with us about laundry, and we're so happy to have her back.
What an honor.

Speaker 12 Hey, Andrea, welcome. Hi.
All right, Andrea, good to see you. First question, the question on everyone's minds.
How do dishwashers work? 101.

Speaker 12 Well, I can tell you how they don't work. A lot of people think that they fill up to the top with water once you close the door, and that's not what happens.

Speaker 12 Yeah, this is actually something that people have said to me. Like, fill up completely? Yeah, like an aquarium or something.

Speaker 12 Does that just not happen? Like a bath for your dish. Yeah, deep soak

Speaker 12 Deep soap dish. Yeah.

Speaker 12 So basically, when you load your dishwasher and you put the detergent in and you start it, a few gallons of water will come out and sort of pre-rinse the dishes. Then the detergent will dispense.

Speaker 12 And then more water comes out, two or three gallons.

Speaker 12 And then for the next, depending on how long the cycle is, so it could be like 30 minutes, it could be two hours, the water is circulated through the spray arms and sprayed onto the dishes, and then it goes back down into the drain and then is pumped out and put over the dishes again.

Speaker 12 This is probably about 70% of the cycle, and then the end it will be rinsed again before if you have selected drying, the drying cycle.

Speaker 12 So it's just that water is just recirculating over and over again. It is.
And it wasn't always like that. This is a somewhat new phenomenon.

Speaker 12 You know, one of the comments I get a lot from people when they're buying dishwashers or they install a new one is they're surprised by how long the cycles are.

Speaker 12 And it's because of Energy Star regulations and certifications, dishwashers are using less water, which means the cycles have to go on for longer and the water needs to be circulated for a longer time.

Speaker 12 Okay, so, you know, I think people always assume that a dishwasher is just awesome because it is convenient.

Speaker 12 But if you have the choice, why use a dishwasher instead of hand washing your dishes and silverware? So dishwashers definitely use less water.

Speaker 12 Modern dishwashers usually use around three to to six gallons for a normal cycle.

Speaker 12 If you want to compare that to hand washing, let's say an average faucet in your home, when it's running, is running one and a half to two gallons of water per minute.

Speaker 12 Most people are going to take longer than two minutes to wash dishes, right? So when you start doing basic math, you are definitely saving water with a dishwasher.

Speaker 12 Is it more sanitary to use a dishwasher as opposed to hand washing too?

Speaker 12 It depends.

Speaker 12 Yes. Overall, absolutely.
Yes. It's more sanitary.

Speaker 12 If you wanted to run your water really hot with hand washing, you could probably kill a lot of bacteria.

Speaker 12 But in general, you're definitely going to have more

Speaker 12 sanitary dishes running them in the dishwasher. All right.
I have a highly controversial question.

Speaker 12 I think it's the thing that nobody believes, which is that we actually recommend that you don't rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.

Speaker 12 So you you should scrape, but you shouldn't rinse them. But I've talked with people before about this and they just refuse to believe it.

Speaker 12 Yes, I don't know who started this rumor to have dishwashers not do their job, but that's why the machine exists. It's called a dishwasher, not a dish sanitizer.
It's also... Pretty cool.

Speaker 12 It's one of the older American appliances. It was originally invented in the 1800s by a woman.
And of course it was because women were probably washing all the dishes, right?

Speaker 12 You know, it's really cool. A lot of where women enter in the science world, a lot of it is through HOMAC.
The dishwasher is not an exception to that.

Speaker 12 So if you consider that this dishwasher is, you know, nearing 200 years old, the concept of it, I'm pretty sure that your dishwasher can do its job if it's at least a decent dishwasher.

Speaker 12 So there's two reasons to scrape and not rinse your dishes. The first is that the point of the dishwasher is to wash dishes, and it's designed to do so.

Speaker 12 The second is that modern detergents work better with a little bit of soil. So if you don't put any foodstuff or soil into your dishwasher, you run the risk of harming your plates and your glasses.

Speaker 12 You can see frosted glass. You'll see, you know, etching on items.

Speaker 12 So when you say scrape, you mean just if you have food scraps on your plate, you're supposed to put those those in the trash and then put your dish directly into the dishwasher. Yes.

Speaker 12 What about, I'm guilty of sometimes letting dishes sit in the sink for too long and then you have that crusty ring on your dishes and it's kind of like you have to pick at it to get it off.

Speaker 12 Is that a situation in which it's reasonable to completely wash it off? Or do you trust your dishwasher to get that as well? It depends on the dishwasher.

Speaker 12 But I would say if it's hard to wash off by hand, don't expect your dishwasher to be able to do it without a little bit of extra effort. That might be a time to soak a dish before you put it in.

Speaker 12 To that point, are there other times when it might be better to rinse your dishes?

Speaker 12 Like, I just feel like sometimes like an old dishwasher or you're at somebody's house and they don't have the best detergent or something.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 12 So that's a good question. I would say that this falls more under a machinery difference.
You know, most cars are going to get you from point A to point B, but every car is different.

Speaker 12 And I would say dishwashers can also have sort of similar quirks.

Speaker 12 So if you have an old dishwasher, you know, you've tried everything, you've rinsed the filter if it has one, you've tried better detergent and it's still not cleaning dishes.

Speaker 12 I would say maybe that's a case for rinsing. I would also say if you're rinsing your dishes already, you might

Speaker 12 want to save up and buy a new dishwasher. Oh, no.
Yeah, I know. All right.
Because at that point, you're doing the work twice, right?

Speaker 12 Well, if you're telling us that we shouldn't be rinsing your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, I'm assuming that means that there's a lot of buildup in the filter eventually.

Speaker 12 Wouldn't that end up breaking your machine? It depends on how liberal you are with your scraping, right? I think sometimes people get confused when you say, don't rinse your dishes.

Speaker 12 They put like a Thanksgiving dinner into their dishwasher and then they're like surprised they flood it.

Speaker 12 If you were to do things like that, not only would your spray arms start distributing debris everywhere, but you also would have potentially like flood your dishwasher from clogs.

Speaker 12 So don't do anything like that.

Speaker 12 But even leaving a fair amount of food once you've scraped off, so when I say a fair amount, I'd say like a tablespoon of yogurt completely spread on a plate and dried out, like something like that would be totally fine.

Speaker 12 And you put it in your dishwasher, enzymes break down the soils. So really the things that get stuck in the filter are going to be things that take a really long time to break down.

Speaker 12 So it's going to be corn, lettuce, even, I mean, in dishwasher testing, if you look at our, any of our articles about it, we've really put these dishwashers to the test.

Speaker 12 And I can only think of one instance where after a full ridiculous dishwasher load that no one would ever wash, where something happened to the filter, and it was really more an issue with the dishwasher.

Speaker 12 Oh. So yeah.
Okay, so then how often would you recommend people clean their filter and the whole machine itself? I would say rinse it monthly. Yeah.
Yeah. Monthly.
What do you mean rinse it?

Speaker 12 So the filter is underneath the bottom spray arms. So you find the bottom spray arms and you pull them off and then you sort of twist.

Speaker 12 What you'll pull out is this little mesh looking basket, kind of tap it off in your compost bin or your trash can and rinse it off in hot water and you're good to go. You put it back in.

Speaker 12 You actually don't even want to clean it. that well because again, the enzymes work a little better with a little soil.

Speaker 12 So we all have a little bit of permission to be a little sloppy yeah right

Speaker 12 but you still have to do it monthly i feel like uh we all passed over the mean i mean look that's me telling you exactly what you should do right but do you clean it monthly

Speaker 12 well no but i i have a partner who does so okay

Speaker 12 don't worry get yourself a partner

Speaker 12 so that's the filter do you have to be cleaning the machine itself because i feel like i've seen, and by seen, I mean have been

Speaker 12 suckered into from TikTok,

Speaker 12 putting like a

Speaker 12 upright cup of white vinegar on the top of the rack or like throwing in a half a lemon and just running a cycle

Speaker 12 with the idea that maybe that will clean the drum and the inside and the filter.

Speaker 12 So that is something you can do. In general, remember, as much as I cover cleaning, I also cover appliances.
So, I'm going to tell you what an appliance person would say: citric acid.

Speaker 12 So, I would say if you've rinsed your dishwasher filter and you're still seeing some debris and you've checked for blockages or whatever, or something just smells weird and you can't figure out what's going on, I would say to run a cycle with Lemashine or a fresh.

Speaker 12 So, now I want to know how you test these because we talked about testing

Speaker 12 washers and detergent when you came on for the laundry episode. How are you out here testing dishwashers? Paint us a picture.

Speaker 12 You know, it's funny because in many ways, as much as I love laundry testing, dishwasher detergent testing is kind of my favorite.

Speaker 12 Ooh, why?

Speaker 12 Only in scoring. In actual prep, it's the worst.
What do you mean by scoring? So when we get the music you listen to,

Speaker 12 or is it like three people standing with cards with numbers on them giving the

Speaker 12 scores? Okay, I'll explain it. But to start before we get there, so basically

Speaker 12 there are a lot of industrial tests for dishwashers. The one we use is the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Speaker 12 Aham, the dishwasher test basically takes different materials that they know can challenge dishwashers and they are run through cycles to see see how they test.

Speaker 12 So what are we talking? Like Ritz crackers?

Speaker 12 Is it like mac and cheese?

Speaker 12 Egg is a big one. Egg yolk.
One of my favorites actually is raspberry jam to test for debris. Because the seeds.

Speaker 12 A lot of things break down when you start washing them, but you know raspberry seed when you see one. If you've ever, if you have any wishes, if you've ever had a child.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 I feel like how are they breaking down even in our own bodies? This is

Speaker 12 made of raspberry seeds? I don't want to think about that. Anyway, go on.
Do you guys do like the crusty, flaky oatmeal that's been left in the bowl?

Speaker 12 We do.

Speaker 12 And it's really interesting to see, you really start to see trends with certain dishwasher detergents and where they really excel with certain types of foodstuff through testing.

Speaker 12 Like some are really awesome at getting oatmeal, but like mysteriously nothing else.

Speaker 12 When we test, so we have a full dishload. So it will usually be about 10 place settings, which includes bowls, plates, salad plates.
And we put

Speaker 12 different foodstuffs on them in quartiles. So we kind of change it up depending on the year.
But one year we did creamed corn, raspberry jam, avocado, and egg yolk.

Speaker 12 And for most of those dishes, we have them dry over a few hours. But then for three of them, we call them our impossible plates.
And we microwave them for a couple minutes.

Speaker 12 I was going to say

Speaker 12 race. Yeah, are you like Jackson Pollock painting them on and then just letting them cross? Kind of.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's not for the faint of heart. Every year when we do dishwasher testing, I like don't eat dinner because it just gets so gross.

Speaker 12 So the first thing we do is we run that full load with tomato juice coated glasses and wine

Speaker 12 stained and lipstick stained wine glasses. We run a full load first on the normal cycle.
The normal cycle is the cycle that dishwasher companies are tested on.

Speaker 12 So this is the most energy efficient cycle and it's the easiest way to find out pretty quickly how good a dishwasher is.

Speaker 12 It's also important to note that we don't expect perfect performance from any of these dishwashers with this test because most people aren't putting this level of stuff into their dishwasher.

Speaker 12 When that cycle's done, we open the dishwasher and we keep track of how dry things are, what kind of debris is left on handles, and then we literally score the dishwasher.

Speaker 12 So I and members of my team will sit

Speaker 12 and read off a number for each stain.

Speaker 12 One out of ten, one out of ten. The highest you can get is five.
Okay. And that's bad.

Speaker 12 So five is bad. Five is bad.
You want a lower score. You want a low score.
So what exactly are you scoring for? We go by the size of debris or the size of leftover stains.

Speaker 12 So if something is smaller than a dime, that would be a one.

Speaker 12 Some things. And then it goes up.
If it's two quarters, that's a five. So we go by, we go by coins.
There we go. There we go.
Okay.

Speaker 12 We score that.

Speaker 12 And we always throw in some curveballs depending on trends we're seeing in testing. But I love this form of testing because it's very straightforward.
compared to laundry.

Speaker 12 Okay. Are you also testing for things like the duration of the cycle or for how well it filters?

Speaker 12 Or is it really just kind of performance, the main central thing a dishwasher is supposed to do, clean your dishes?

Speaker 12 How good the filter is is going to be a part of how well it cleans.

Speaker 12 And that's why we have like the raspberry seeds and coffee grounds and things of that nature. And probably the biggest test for that too is the tomato juice debris.

Speaker 12 Because again, it's very easy to tell if you have a raspberry seed that is somehow mysteriously now on the back of a plate, like you can really judge how the filter works.

Speaker 12 So the filter is definitely part of it. So most of these dishwashers run on sensor.
When you're putting a full meal's worth of dishes into the dishwasher, the sensor is going to elongate the cycle.

Speaker 12 It's going to lengthen the cycle.

Speaker 12 So we don't pay that much attention to dishwasher cycle length, except for express cycles and how effective they

Speaker 12 What about the rack? I actually have gone through two dishwashers in my apartment. What? Because my landlords are awesome and they replaced one or actually two that broke.
So I'm on my third.

Speaker 12 And the newest one that we have, it has such a great, has such a great rack.

Speaker 12 Like, it's just superior. The other two that we had had, we kind of realized we did not like the rack layout.
Is that something that you consider? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 12 So actually, one of my favorite dishwasher sources is a professor of robotics engineering now.

Speaker 12 And when I first interviewed him, I was really curious how he transitioned from working at Whirlpool designing dishwashers to robotic arms.

Speaker 12 And it was actually, he designed collapsible tines, the joints on dishwashers.

Speaker 12 So he really walked us through. what we want to look for in terms of recognizing quality in baskets and tines and racks.
And we take a lot of that into account.

Speaker 12 But sometimes it's just, you can just tell by handling something, like when you pull the rack out, some of them feel really wobbly and like they're going to collapse.

Speaker 12 And others you can just tell are going to hold your dish as well.

Speaker 12 So, Andrea, I think this might be the most controversial question of this episode, maybe of Wire Cutter Show's entire history, but tell us, what is the correct way to load a dishwasher?

Speaker 12 Iyanla fixed my life. Andrea fixed my marriage.

Speaker 12 So to me, the most important part of loading your dishwasher is making sure that the spray arms are going to hit any of the dirty

Speaker 12 parts of your dishes. So that means don't load your bowls facing up.

Speaker 12 It means to make sure that your forks and spoons are either loaded in the third rack or the utensil basket in a way where they will also be hit.

Speaker 12 In testing, we play around with different placements of utensils and you'd be surprised that actually a lot of times those yogurt spoons or oatmeal spoons that you think the dishwasher stinks, it's actually that you had it like tilted a certain way and like nothing was getting on it.

Speaker 12 So I would say that you want to load forks and spoons handles side down and then knives laid side down. You also want to leave out certain items.

Speaker 12 So you do not want to wash wood items in your dishwasher.

Speaker 12 One, because you can ruin the wood and two because you could also risk like putting a splinter through your filter and causing avoidable problems. Let's say that.

Speaker 12 I'd always thought that if you put bowls on the bottom rack face down, then maybe it would stop the spray arms from reaching the top rack. Is that a real concern to have?

Speaker 12 Do you mean like large mixing bowls? Yeah, anything that's larger than your average, you know, like soup bowl. I mean, don't put like two sheet pans on your bottom rack and block everything, right?

Speaker 12 Well, that's a good question. Like, should you be washing things like metal sheet pans or metal pots and pans? The big ones.
Yeah. I'm going to let that be a personal choice.

Speaker 12 I've experimented with it when we dishwasher test. It's just not something that I would do all the time.
What about like the edges of your racks? Is there a strategy to like where you put? things

Speaker 12 actually on the racks. Yes.
So the edges, especially the corners, if you think about the way a dishwasher works, the spray arms are circular in a box.

Speaker 12 So there are dishwashers on the market that can really get those corners. I've tested them.
They're great. That's not most dishwashers.

Speaker 12 An example would be a really dirty bloody Mary Glass or a ramekin filled with brownie batter or something like that. It might not get totally cleaned depending on.
So I wouldn't put those there.

Speaker 12 I put them more toward the middle of the top round. Also the middle of the dishwasher is the best real estate to get cleaned.
If the machine's good, yeah. I see.

Speaker 12 Some dishwashers have dead zones. It's really interesting.
You just know your dishwasher. Yeah.
Okay. And I would say that if you consistently have dishes that are coming out,

Speaker 12 you're being realistic about how much you're scraping off.

Speaker 12 I would take a look at the manual and make sure, because every dishwasher is a little bit different, but also most dishwashers have multiple ways you can load the top.

Speaker 12 So it might be there is another way you could place things that would be worth a try.

Speaker 12 I was always told by my mom, love her, that you should never run your dishwasher and then leave the house because something could happen. What are your thoughts on that? I think that's good advice.

Speaker 12 I do not run my dishwasher when I'm not home. I was really not expecting you to say that.

Speaker 12 It's a curveball. I thought you'd say it's fine.

Speaker 12 And the reason I'm going to say no is because it's so many dishwashers still use a heating element. And heating elements can get very hot and you never know what could happen.

Speaker 12 Now, this is also being extremely cautious, but yeah, I wouldn't do it. Well, I agree with your mom.

Speaker 12 Okay, so just to recap real quick, the best way to wash your dishes in a dishwasher is to scrape them, not rinse them. You should be loading your dishwasher appropriately.

Speaker 12 And we do have a guide that talks about this on the site, right? We do. So we will share that in the show notes.
You should be washing your dishwasher every once in a while.

Speaker 12 You should should be cleaning the filter, cleaning the interior. Andrea, you also wrote a piece about that that we will include in the show notes.
So now we're going to take a quick break.

Speaker 12 And then when we're back, we'll get the final word on dishwasher detergents. Liquids, powder, pods, all of it.
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 The Wire Cutter Show is supported by Rocket Mortgage.

Speaker 3 Your home is an active investment, not a passive one.

Speaker 4 And with Rocket Mortgage, you can put your home equity to work right away. When you unlock your home equity, you unlock new doors for your family.

Speaker 7 Renovations, extensions, even buying your next property.

Speaker 5 Get started today with smarter tools and guidance from real mortgage experts.

Speaker 2 Find out how at rocketmortgage.com.

Speaker 9 Rocket Mortgage LLC, licensed in 50 states, NMLS consumeraccess.org, 3030.

Speaker 13 Huge savings on Dell AIPCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more faster.

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Speaker 2 Chapter one. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 Part one.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back to the Wire Cutter Show. Our guest is Andrea Barnes, wire cutter staff writer and dishwasher expert.
So, Andrea, let's talk detergent.

Speaker 12 You've tested over 35 of them, but we really want to dig in deep. So, dishwasher detergent, what's in it, and how does it work?

Speaker 12 So, the main cleaning agent in dishwasher detergent is enzymes, which are biological molecules that exist in your everyday life and like to break things down.

Speaker 12 So certain enzymes and detergent break down fats, starches. The other things that are in good dishwasher detergent would be some form of bleach.
Usually oftentimes it's oxygen bleach.

Speaker 12 So we're back to oxygen bleach again, which we talked about a lot in our laundry episodes. Yes.
Yep. And some form of salt.

Speaker 12 So dishwasher detergent, when the cycle starts and the water starts running in your dishwasher, it used to be that the dishwasher detergent dispensers had two dispensers.

Speaker 12 I don't know if anyone remembers this. Oh, I remember.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 So, they don't, it doesn't do that anymore. But basically, the dishwasher detergent starts to dissolve as it's activated and runs through the wash system.

Speaker 12 It starts to break down the different food soils, which then provides more room for the surfactants and bleaches to clean the dishes.

Speaker 12 The wire cutter pick for our favorite detergent is cascade-free and clear action packs. Now, these are pods.

Speaker 12 I remember from our laundry episode, Andrea, you're not a big fan of pods for laundry because you can't pre-treat laundry with pods. Why are pods winning for the dishwasher?

Speaker 12 This goes back to my favorite topic, chemistry. So basically, when you mix bleach and enzymes in a liquid form, you actually deactivate the enzymes.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 when you have a liquid detergent, you either have a mostly bleach detergent or a mostly enzymatic detergent.

Speaker 12 Now, the whole point of the enzymes is to start breaking the soils down to let the other parts of the detergent do their job. So when you take one of them away, you have less of a clean.

Speaker 12 So powder detergent, in that sense is superior because you can mix things in a solid form that you can't mix in a liquid form.

Speaker 12 With our picks, you kind of have the best of both worlds because you have the solid powder combined with liquid, but they don't actually combine until the cycle starts.

Speaker 12 So, and actually we've done this. We've done these dissolvability tests and they're really cool.

Speaker 12 The way our picks dissolve is you see the powder start to break down into the glass and the top liquid part takes a lot longer to break down.

Speaker 12 And the liquid part is usually some sort of liquid enzyme and some sort of cleaning booster that pushes it above just your typical powder washing, which is how they became picks.

Speaker 12 Andrea, something that we didn't get to cover in our laundry episode, but I know that some listeners wanted us to ask you is pods. Are they environmentally terrible?

Speaker 12 I think people think of them as wrapped in plastic and it's just going into the water, creating like a microplastic issue.

Speaker 12 Well, first of all, okay, so I've interviewed, no joke, 11 scientists

Speaker 12 in the last two years to get to the bottom of the answer to this question.

Speaker 12 Not one of the scientists I spoke with believes that pod film would count as a microplastic because it's liquid. What? So there's that.

Speaker 12 What do you mean it's liquid? Because when you're holding a pod, it feels like a little plastic wrapped. It definitely feels solid.
Yeah, it's water-soluble.

Speaker 12 soluble so that said obviously that doesn't mean it disappears right i wouldn't like go throw a pod into the ocean um personally um but you know pod film is something called polyvinyl alcohol which is a close relative to a different material called polyvinyl acetate which is also known as glue.

Speaker 12 If you look at a patent for Elmer's Glue slime kits, there is polyvinyl alcohol in it. It's actually something that we encounter every day.
It's in eye drops.

Speaker 12 If you like to wear like sheet masks, it's in sheet masks. It's in mascara.
It's in a lot of things. I don't want it to be in these things.
It's not a petroleum-based film. It is petroleum-based.

Speaker 12 It is some of it.

Speaker 12 But what I'm hearing is that it's not a lot of a bad thing, but it is made of a...

Speaker 12 Kind of a bad thing.

Speaker 12 But it's so marginal that it doesn't matter. Like, what actually is the answer here?

Speaker 12 I think that a really good dishwasher detergent, if like if you looked at the results of our testing and saw the difference between a chambered pod that we recommend versus a regular powder or liquid detergent of any kind, you'd be amazed.

Speaker 12 And in that regard, to us, it really can be that you don't have to rinse your dishes. You're saving water.

Speaker 12 It's a personal choice. If it weirds you out, like absolutely don't don't do it.
But don't think that there aren't other petrochemicals hanging out in any of the detergents you're buying. You know,

Speaker 12 I do get that. And I think for us, when we think about this, there have been studies on the impact of polyvinyl alcohol.

Speaker 12 Like, I wouldn't say, again, I wouldn't say go throw a bunch of it into your ocean or like start eating it for fun.

Speaker 12 But I think in this case, like, based on what we know now, the benefits can outweigh it.

Speaker 12 So, Andrea, what about Rinse Aid? What even is it? What does it do? And is it necessary? So, Rinse Aid is another surfactant.

Speaker 12 And basically, what it does is it prevents water from being like little droplets and puddles. It breaks it into a sheet so that it dries faster, which can lead to less spots on your glassware.

Speaker 12 Whether or not you need it really depends on how fastidious you are.

Speaker 12 I know a lot of people who don't use it, but they are designed to have Rinse Aid in them.

Speaker 12 So, like, if I have a mediocre dishwasher and I don't really care if my wine glass has spots, then I can skip it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 12 Can we close the loop on loading? I am the person who finds every single empty space in the dishwasher, and I throw things in. I think the word

Speaker 12 maybe is akimbo.

Speaker 12 How does your partner feel about this? Oh,

Speaker 12 not great. Well, this is the premise of the whole show.
This is the whole premise, yeah. But I just want mostly for you to say that I'm right.
Okay.

Speaker 12 And I win. You know, I've been part of this great debate.
And you know what I think the most powerful thing to do is if you're the akimbo loader, just let the other person do it.

Speaker 12 You know, like fight back.

Speaker 12 Two final, very unsexy questions about manuals and warranties. Do you actually have to read your dishwasher manual? What's not sexy about a dishwasher manual? You know what? I take it back.

Speaker 12 I guess, how stubborn are you?

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 So back to the great dishwasher debate. I do think that manuals are a great way to settle household disputes, personally.

Speaker 12 It's your witness.

Speaker 12 Although the risk there is that you might lose, especially if you live with someone who studies the dishwasher manual.

Speaker 12 Read it in secret first and then decide if you want to bring in. Definitely come prepared to that conversation, you know?

Speaker 12 Sure, everyone should read their dishwasher manual. Will they? So there's definitely a case to be made for reading any appliance manual.

Speaker 12 You'll get the basic rundown of a specific machine and you'll likely learn something new about the specific appliance you have. This includes learning how you should clean it, basic maintenance.

Speaker 12 You might even learn something about it that makes your life a lot easier.

Speaker 12 You know, sometimes people don't realize that the dishwasher can connect to an app that makes it possible for you to monitor your dishwasher cycle more easily.

Speaker 12 Or Sometimes it will tell you exactly how often you need to rinse your filter. And every dishwasher is a little different.

Speaker 12 A lot of the tips that we talked about are here and also again, great material for settling household disputes. Manuals for continuing education.
And marriages. Yes.

Speaker 12 And then how about warranties? What should people know or bear in mind about warranties?

Speaker 12 So we take warranties into serious consideration when we look at appliances.

Speaker 12 And our current top pick, the Mila G5008, has an automatic two-year warranty with an option to extend to five-year warranty.

Speaker 12 I tell anyone I know who's buying a dishwasher to buy the extended warranty. It's worth the cost.
You just never know what might happen.

Speaker 12 If there's a dishwasher you really want and the warranty isn't so hot, you can also be strategic about where you buy. IKEA has a five-year warranty.
Costco has, I believe, a two-year warranty.

Speaker 12 So I tell people to buy appliances there all the time. Okay, Andrea, you've been here before, so you might not be surprised that before we wrap, we like to ask all our our guests one final question.

Speaker 12 What's the last thing you've bought that you've really loved? It's actually the League of Kitchens cookbook, which Rachel Wharton, who's on the appliance team, was a co-author on.

Speaker 12 What makes it great? So it is, well, from a geeky journalist's perspective, it's awesome because she helped write recipes made by grandmas, basically.

Speaker 12 So she watched videos of people.

Speaker 12 taking a pinch of something and figuring out exactly you know when you like try to recreate recipes yeah So she actually spent months on this, like at night, figuring out exactly what a pinch is.

Speaker 12 You know,

Speaker 12 yeah, it's really awesome. And it's all women who aren't necessarily professional cooks per se who teach at this school, League of Kitchens.
And they're from all over the world.

Speaker 12 And the book is awesome. There's one chapter I'm on right now on eggs, and I can't wait to cook like every single thing in it.
So yeah, it's a great book. Great tips.
I love that.

Speaker 12 Andrea, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 12 Andrea, back again. That was great.
I love that Andrea is like nerdy in the best possible way. She's like, she goes deep.
She's so much. She goes in and looks at like patents to find, you know.

Speaker 12 Her sources are like

Speaker 12 stack. It's great.
Incredible. What are your takeaways from this conversation with her? Mama was right.
Don't run your dishwasher when you're about to leave the house.

Speaker 12 She's going to love to hear that because I was ready to be like, you were wrong. That's just so crazy.
You don't have to worry about it that much. Yeah.

Speaker 12 My takeaway is that I sometimes have dirty spoons and bowls and things like that that are just not getting clean in my dishwasher.

Speaker 12 So I'm going to take a little bit more care, put the dirtiest stuff towards the middle of the rack. I'm going to be a little bit more careful when I'm loading my...

Speaker 12 my spoons and forks and everything to make sure that those spray arms are actually going to be able to have access to the dirtiest parts.

Speaker 12 I think on top of that, my takeaway is around detergent, that if really you're not getting the clean that you need to be getting or you should be getting and you've tried to troubleshoot in other ways,

Speaker 12 you might need to switch detergents and try something else. And that the main active ingredient that you're looking for in these detergents that's actually really doing the trick is enzymes.

Speaker 12 Yeah, enzymes. And, you know, this is the bonus one.
I think that if anyone doubts that they should not be rinsing their dishes, the counter-argument is that you can actually damage your dishes.

Speaker 12 If you're using enzymatic detergent, it could cause some damage. So the more you know.
Yep.

Speaker 12 If you want to find out even more than this about Wire Cutter's coverage, Andrea's reporting, or if you want to check out any of the products or tips Andrea recommended today, go to nytimes.com slash wirecutter.

Speaker 12 Or as always, you can find a link in the show notes. That is it.
Kyra, Christine. See you next week.
See you. Bye.

Speaker 12 And here's what's coming up next week on The Wire Cutter Show. Pull-ups are a great exercise.
They're definitely not the easiest of exercises. It's possible, some might say.

Speaker 12 I feel like it's the white whale. Make sure you're following the show on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss it.

Speaker 12 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Editing by Abigail Keel.
Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.

Speaker 12 Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia BaeTube, and Diane Wong.

Speaker 12 Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.
I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Sear Clissette.
And I'm Rosie Garrett.

Speaker 12 Thank you for listening.

Speaker 12 Good racks are nylon. Sorry, now I'm laughing.

Speaker 12 That's why it's fucking good.

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