[flowerbreeze]

It sounds like you're joking, but I've long dreamed of a different type of dishwasher. One that washes instantly. I don't need it to fit more than a single plate at one time. Just put something in from one end, and out comes clean and dry plate on the other end. Like a car wash.

I am quite certain these exist already large kitchens and I seem to remember one from a school diner from maybe 35 years ago, but I've always been wondering why they don't exist on smaller scale.

[Waterluvian]

Restaurant dishwashers use an enormous amount of water. They require a hot water supply that’s much hotter than residential heaters typically supply. They require a more complete manual pre-rinse and scrub. They only accept kitchenware that’s made for them and destroy the rest.

Restaurants cycle dishes a lot during a single mealtime. Homes don’t. I don’t think “I can’t wait 2 hours” is typically a real problem.

[Skwid]

Those I've used in the UK aren't so bad, they're cold fill only with a heating element in the sump. It takes maybe 15 minutes to fill and get up to temperature at the start of a shift, after that each cycle is ~2 minutes.

The hot water is recirculated during the wash, the rinse uses fresh water from the tap with the excess going out an overflow. A little sump water gets replaced every cycle, but enough stays that it's back up to temperature before you've emptied and refilled it. There's also a small peristaltic pump to top up the detergent directly from the bottle.

Not much benefit in a home setting unless you fancy having it hot and ready 24/7 though.

[swiftcoder]

They also have the clever system of standardised, removable baskets. Need to increase dishwashing throughput? yank the clean basket, line them up on the counter to dry, and run a new basket through

This is probably the one trick consumer dishwashers should emulate

[hilariously]

The problem in basically any consumer kitchen is storage - having racks and racks of stuff under your big stainless steel commercial countertops is no problem.

[emj]

So sell small scale scullery, sink, storage and sorting systems to save and subvert storage solutions.

[youngtaff]

Buy two dishwashers — one of clean stuff and one for dirty stuff — my brother’s seriously thinking about doing it when his kitchen is remodelled

[iterateoften]

Those Restaurant “dishwashers” are sanatizers. A dishwasher is a person in a restaurant. They are the ones removing and getting the dish clean.

[Waterluvian]

Dishwashers? How dare you. We preferred to be called “Sanitation Engineers - Dishwashing Division” Even had bossman put it on our paystub (he was so tolerant of us kids. I think he was just happy that we were into buffoonery and not meth).

[bckr]

Engineer? Wow, that’s high falutin. Sanitation Technician is as high as I got.

[aryehof]

Sure it wasn't Sanitation Team Lead?

[vntok]

Dishwasher? I hardly know her!

[fwipsy]

Did this actually happen? That's pretty wholesome lmao.

[Waterluvian]

It was definitely one of the more tame activities at work. We would golf rotten potatoes into the field behind the restaurant. Play Celery Generals with traffic, make Concoctions and get the waitresses to test and rate them, and we had an entire WWF wrestling league (that was exclusively judged by the entrance strut and banter; there was never any actual wrestling). Sometimes we’d make new pizza recipes and present them to the kitchen staff of the pizza shop next door. Their contribution to the bit was to act incredibly Italian in their wholesale rejection of our pie. Sometimes we’d even do work.

[AstroJetson]

How did they turn down your Black Olive and Pineapple Pizza? Asking for a friend.

[doubleorseven]

the real problem with home dishwasher is that it extend the duration of the task.

the task is prepare food, eat, clean. when you leave the kitchen and come back the next day the task is now different, its unpack, prepare,eat,clean.

you are constantly not finishing today's tasks. it lives to see another day. if you can fix it, bound it to the workflow, you will be a billionaire

[Nebasuke]

I think it's just a perception thing. I don't see emptying the dishwasher as part of the task that is filling it. My last task of the day is normally turning the dishwasher on and to me my task list feels finished. In some sense the tasks related to dishwasher for a day are "empty -> fill -> turn on".

You could use your same type of reasoning for food/cooking. When you buy food and put it in the fridge to cook later, you haven't finished the task. I think that's more a way of feeling permanently uncomfortable with things not being finished. There is no end state for most things in the house. Work is never done.

[jayd16]

Easy. Just keep your dishes in the dishwasher instead of the shelf.

[doubleorseven]

oh yes, the two dishwashers solution

[paufernandez]

A friend of mine actually did it, and he is quite happy.

[tedmiston]

> you are constantly not finishing today's tasks. it lives to see another day. if you can fix it, bound it to the workflow, you will be a billionaire

dual dishwashers

[Leonard_of_Q]

> I've always been wondering why they don't exist on smaller scale.

Because they need space, they need even more nasty chemicals than domestic dishwashers, they need a stack of trays to load the dishes on and a crew to load and unload them.

If you want a dishwasher which doesn't require unloading after use you can get 2 of them, one of which is "clean", the other "dirty" or washing. When the "dirty" one is full you turn it on and let it wash while you take whatever you need from the "clean" one. Once the formerly-dirty one has finished it's cycle the roles are reversed and it becomes the "clean" one.

[jason_s]

That's called a Hobart. https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers

I've used these while working as a volunteer in a camp kitchen during work weekends, where we had maybe 20-40 guests eating a meal. You put dishes/silverware/pots/pans/whatever in a square tray, push it into one side of the Hobart, and pull down a lever to close the doors and start the cycle. They take a number of minutes that you can count on one hand... I seem to remember 90-120 seconds but I'm not sure. Stuff comes out clean and hot on the other side, and you want to pipeline this so it's one person with dirty hands feeding stuff in, and one person with clean hands (and thick gloves) pulling the square trays out, letting them cool, and putting the clean dishes/etc. away.

They release a huge amount of steam and they're wonderful for this kind of volume (20-40 people at a meal + all the cooking implements to support this). Larger than home use, though --- unless of course you had a mansion with servants. And I get the sense that maintenance and operating costs would be a lot higher than a regular plain dishwasher.

[raddan]

When I was a teenager, my very first real job (after being a paperboy) was being a dishwasher in a popular local seafood restaurant. Minimum wage at the time was $4.25/hr but they offered me $5.50/hr. Boy howdy!

On one shift I was paired with a ex-convict. With the exception of the cooks themselves, most of the kitchen was staffed with high school students and ex-cons. The ex-con I was paired with was a dead ringer for Roger Daltry. I was on the "dirty" side and he was on the "hot" side (because there is a pecking order in even the worst jobs), and for some reason, he wanted _me_ to control the opening of the door. I think the reason is that this guy was high all the time and would space out unless something grabbed his attention. Anyway, I made the mistake of opening the door a bit too soon, when the machine was running, and it blasted this guy with steam. I remember him yelping in pain and then glaring at me angrily. One of the line cooks said something along the lines of "we try not to kill our dishwashers" which probably stopped the guy from punching me.

It's a beast of a machine. A little out of place in an ordinary household kitchen...

[mhb]

I've dreamed of a dishwasher for people who prioritize clean dishes quickly and quietly over the incremental savings from using asymptotically less water or energy. See also low flush toilets and clothes washing machines.

[theoreticalmal]

Too bad the government demands you prioritize the latter

[askvictor]

I've long dreamed of a dishwasher that can detect when you remove the (cleaned) dishes from it, and presents a display saying 'load dishes' or something like that. And after finishing a cycle, says 'unload dishes'. Should be pretty easy to achieve with some load cells in the feet, but haven't seen any like that.

[Sheeny96]

We had this at my old work, except it wasn't a display, it was a circular piece of paper with "clean" on one side and "dirty" on the other. When it was done, you rotate the paper so it was clean side up. Should we have gone for series A? It was a pretty great MVP after all, albeit manual, but automation of the paper flipping would of course come on the second iteration

[Skwid]

There's also the upgrade path of 2 dishwashers with a single 'clean' token moved between the two. Cupboards are an legacy product holding back progress.

[fragmede]

So the product to make then, is a dishwasher that's the size of cabinets, so people can afford to have two of them in the existing space that they have.

[fragmede]

Wait, someone's already doing this! https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/dishwashing/dishdrawer-dishw...

[ValentineC]

> We had this at my old work, except it wasn't a display, it was a circular piece of paper with "clean" on one side and "dirty" on the other. When it was done, you rotate the paper so it was clean side up.

The downside of low tech solutions if many people touch it (i.e. not just the janitor or rostered staff) is that someone can still add their shared mug to the dishwasher just after a cycle's complete, causing the entire batch to be considered unclean. Or in your example, someone deciding to flip the sign but not emptying out the dishwasher.

Then again, these are little things that people have learnt to make do and just live with, and I'm not sure it's worth paying 2x or 3x, or even 20x the price just for fancy feet, like what the article thinks people might do with a fancy oven.

[klondike_klive]

I would for sure be that rookie who is paralysed with indecision over whether to read "clean" as an adjective or an imperative. Is it telling me that it's clean or that it needs cleaning?

[Feathercrown]

Given "dirty" would make a strange (although valid) imperative, it would likely be referring to the state of the dishes

[DANmode]

Bezos has magnet versions.

[briHass]

Many modern ones have a door open sensor that allows for the dishwasher to display that dishes are clean after a cycle until the door is opened and fully closed again.

That doesn't help, however, if users are lazy and don't unload the dishwasher after opening it to grab a clean plate or whatever.

It's a nice feature that can be added with existing sensors and one line of logic in the uC. Another one I noticed recently is garage door openers with the photo transmitter/receiver ('beam') to stop the door if someone blocks it can use that same beam to turn on the light if broken when the door is up. Handy if entering a dark garage from outside.

[wgd]

Some dishwashers add a simple timer-based heuristic so if you open it for just a few seconds while you lazily grab something the "clean" indicator stays lit.

[TowerTall]

I used to have two dishwashers. One for clean. One for dirty.

[aequitas]

What you really want is 2 dishwashers! That way you never have to unload the dishwasher because you alternate your dishes between the two. The one that has just completed the cleaning cycle has now become a cupboard with the clean dishes and the other one becomes the dirty dish storage and vice versa.

[AstroJetson]

I have a friend whos kitchen is almost the size of my apartment. They have a "dish" dishwasher and a "glass" dishwasher with different inside configurations. Woe to me that only has a sink and loaded into the wrong dishwasher.

(They also have a fridge and then two pull out drawer units, one is for keeping extra snacks frozen things (like ice, ice cream, juice etc.) and the other is for veggie / meat.)

[mejutoco]

I feel like between plates, cups, pots, strainers etc for this to work I would need 4 or 5 dishwashers. Basically replacing each cupboard with cleanable utensils with a dishwasher.

With 2 dishwashers one would use some clean plates and maybe leave some pots behind that would not be used for a while. In practice, these would need to be emptied. It is a great idea if one uses only one dishwasher worth of utensils though.

I think of those toilet modules in japan where you can clean the whole bathroom with a hose. Maybe what we need are self cleaning cupboards.

[afandian]

I don't know the first thing about dishwashers, but it seems obvious to me.

The cycle-to-volume ratio is as bad as it could possibly be. Conventional dishwashers recirculate water as they wash and rinse. I imagine there's an mx + c formula to how much water is needed (c = enough water to prime the pump or whatever). So compared to a normal size load, you'd be wasting that constant amount of water.

The wash is also likely going to follow mx+c (c = time for grease to break down, time to rinse, time to dry etc). You can wait a few hours for a whole set of crockery. Can you wait a few hours for a single plate?

Commercial "passthrough" dishwashers work very differently. Manual mechanical action with a spray, plus a quick wash, sterilise and rinse. At that point why not wash your single plate by hand?

[HelloNurse]

It can be accurately simulated with appropriate brushes and rags, water and soap, and a sufficient number of hands.

[chairmansteve]

I quite frequently just rinse my plate or cup under the tap and put it on the drying rack. Instant!

[chasd00]

The answer is obviously paper plates and plastic silverware /s

[BobBagwill]

Then someone has to remember to buy them and take out the trash. The canonical solution is for you and your lazy roommates to eat straight from the pot over the sink. When done, fill the pot with water, to discourage the ants and roaches. Occasionally, you end up with a drowned ratling, but hey, wachagonna do?

One pot, no dishes. Each roommate has to keep track of their private spoon. Greedy "clever" roommate who shows up with a liter ladle triggers a spoon fight in the kitchen. Eating from pot by hand is corrected by rapping their knuckles with your spoons. Eventually, all the glassware ends up broken, and some bozo threw out all the used red solo cups, but luckily, the kitchen faucet has a spray attachment.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

[fragmede]

If you're going to optimize that, move over to Soylent or Huel. Instead of preparing food and eating it, it's more efficient to mix powder with water, and for people to drink the resulting slurry. As long as that mix has all the things a body needs, you're all set. No mess!