Ode to the Dishwasher

Now, to some of you, this may seem like a very strange thing to blog about, but I have to express my gratitude! Last spring, Dave and I redid some of the things in our kitchen. Among those changes, were our appliance. Our old dishwasher had some issues and since we needed to replace that, I decided we should have them all match our stainless fridge that we had bought a couple of years ago. After shopping around and looking into different features in the various appliances I wanted, I made my selections. A microwave with cooking sensors first. Then, I decided that I wanted a double oven. I knew from the beginning I would love it, and I have! I love having the small top oven. It heats up quickly, it is more energy efficient, I can cook 2 different things at once, etc. It's great. There have been no surprises there.

However, I can't say the same about my dishwasher. At first, I very few ideas of what I would want in a new dishwasher. It didn't take me too long to decide that I really wanted something that had the controls on the top. I can't say how many times I had to restart the dishwasher from the beginning because one or more of the kids came by and played around with the dial during the middle of a wash cycle. I could never be sure if the dishes had be fully cleaned or just been rinsed. So, controls on the top soon became a must.

(I just looked at this picture.

I guess I should have cleaned it before taking the picture, but oh well!)

I soon found that the dishwashers that have the controls on the top come with some other seemingly insignificant little features. Admittedly, as they were explained to me, I thought they sounded nice, but not things were anything close to deal breakers for me. Over these last months, those once insignificant features have come to far out weigh the once all-important "control panel on top" feature (which is still huge to be by they way). My lovely baby is able to adjust in so many different configurations to allow for thousands of dishes to fit inside. (OK, maybe not thousands, but certainly way more than your average dishwasher). The prongs in here can go up and down to fit big dishes, the top shelf rises and lowers allowing for full-size plates to fit on the top rack; all sorts of small attachments can fit in and move around to hold sippy cup lids, flatware, etc. Again, I recoginze that this is a crazy thing to blog about, but I am loving it. This weekend, we had some great friends come to stay with us. They have 5 kids like us. So, we had 10 kids here. Last night, Dave and I were watching all the kids. I went to load the dishwasher after dinner only to find that I hadn't started it after a baby shower from that afternoon! I had 2 large punch bowls in there as well as other misc. dishes. Drat! Now I am going to have to wash all the dishes by hand! Not so! Here we are with the 2 punch bowls, plates, cups, silverware, tupperware containers, and whatever else the kids messed up over the course of the afternoon. So, I had to pay tribute to this beauty. Like I said before, I knew I would love my new oven, but this dishwasher has been such a treat for me, that I just had to express my gratitude and love for all the hard working inventors at GE. Thanks! (Also, this baby is so quiet! When I first got it, I would call people and hold the phone up to it so they could hear--or not hear!-- just how quiet it is!)