Dishwashers

After my last post about the whole Jet-Dry crap, and subsequent washing of dishes by hand, and the comments by all yinz (getting back to my Western PA vernacular), I got to thinking a little more. I haven't had a dishwasher in YEARS. My parents have one, and I never know how to load the damn thing, and somehow there are always complaints about its performance. And manufacturers are taking the phosphate out of detergents, because it's kind of bad stuff, but then the dishes don't get very clean. You have to rinse them well and hell by then you may have as well just washed 'em by hand, right? Seems like an awful lot of extra water to me. Rinsing them off... then all the water even in your "water saver" mode... hmmm.

People say washing dishes by hand wastes more water. I say no, not necessarily. You just have to be a little conscientious and judicious when washing by hand. For instance, don't fill up the whole damn sink THEN start washing. Wash while filling. Don't rinse one thing at a time. Stack them then rinse quickly. Don't use too much soap; then you don't have to rinse as much. And most importantly, don't turn the water on full blast when you really don't need to.

SO THEN comes in the argument about TIME. My favorite.  Greenie, I don't have time to do dishes. I'm too busy. I have kids. We make a lot of dishes. Um, that's what kids are FOR... to do dishes. If you have kids and they ain't doin' dishes, you are doing something seriously wrong. They're too busy with all their activities?? YOU are doing something seriously wrong. Chores are FOR kids. Kids are for chores. We all did them. It made us better. I know a certain 22-yr-old that can't do dishes to save her life. THAT is WRONG. Kids on step-chairs to reach the sink to do dishes? THAT'S more like it. We juggled school and homework and playtime and still were expected to do our chores. Period. We earned an allowance, we didn't just get it handed to us, or get "rewarded" for behavior we were supposed to exhibit anyway. Kids should do chores. I will not back off of that opinion, no matter how many people try to say I have no idea what it's like because I don't have kids. I was a kid. I did dishes. Every day. Get over yourself and get over your kids and figure it out.

Then there's my other favorite thing: families who use paper or Styrofoam (??????!!) plates at dinner because they don't have time/can't be bothered to do dishes. See the above paragraph so I don't have to repeat myself. There is NO excuse to use anything disposable at the dinner table. Hell, I ain't even giving a pass on lunch. PLATES. Clean things when done. Repeat.

This is what we call progress, Folks. Disposable lives and no time to do BASIC things that we used to have to do, but now we don't have time because we are too busy running around and stressing out to do the most basic things in the world. Make it into family time. Catch up on the day over dishes. You're spending time together, who cares if it's a "chore"? Whatever. Just frickin' do something.

Wait, wait.. we have free time now and we're happier and oh so much more productive and life is so much easier.

Oh. Wait. No it's not. No WE are not.

Let's go back, shall we?

UGH the commercial I just saw...

...sent me straight in to my computer.

The new Jet-Dry commercial... or whatever the heck they call that stuff now (don't have a dishwasher, son't want one), shows a chick pulling a glass out of the dishwasher and getting thoroughly disgusted by "spots." She then proceeds to THROW the GLASS in the GARBAGE CAN. (Which, by the way, is nicely lined with a black trash bag. Subliminal sales.) Oh, but don't worry: they flash the word, "Dramatization" at the beginning, and they also say "Don't try this at home" as she flips the wine glass into her nice stainless steel garbage can.

I know. Just a commercial. But what is this saying???

Nothing, Rhonda. It's not saying anything. It's just a dumb commercial trying to sell a chemical that takes spots off your glasses that wouldn't have them on there if you washed them by hand. But we're too busy. It's a pain in the ass. My hands might get dry from the detergent. I'm too busy. Dishes are germy and they have to be sanitized in the dishwasher. There's just not enough time. It's a pain in the ass to have to actually WASH dishes. Oh, wait, I repeated myself in there somewhere.

Do you even know what's IN that stuff??? I don't. What makes your glasses dry ultra-fast after they get bombarded by other chemicals? More chemicals, that much I know. Really? So that we don't have some harmless stupid spots on glasses? So that we don't have to towel-dry stuff after it goes through the dishwasher?

I've never really quite gotten on board with the whole piling chemicals on top of other chemicals to do something I'm too busy/lazy to do. Oh, wait, here's what's in it:

Water	Diluent
Trideceth-4	Nonionic Surfactant
Magnesium Chloride	None
Propylene Glycol	Solvent
Alcohols Alkoxylates	Nonionic Surfactant
Sodium Cumene Sulfonate	Hydrotrope
Citric Acid	Complexing/Sequestering Agent
Zinc Acetate	None
Sodium Sulfate	Filler
Benzophenone-3	Other
Tetrasodium EDTA	Complexing/Sequestering Agent
Magnesium Nitrate	Stabilizer
Acid Blue 9	Colorant
Methylchloroisothiazolinone	Preservative
Magnesium Chloride	Stabilizer
Methylisothiazolinone	Preservative

Any questions?

I'm good.

Green Products by Non-Green Companies, To Buy or Not to Buy?

Every company out there is making a "green" option product. Dish detergent? We have our old stand-by's but oh here's an Earth-friendly option! Laundry detergent? Cleaners? All of them are jumping on the band wagon. Do they care about the Earth? Snort. Of course not. Do they care about profit? Why, yes of course. That's why they are in business, after all. Do they think they can scam some money from the green movement with a little bit of greenwashing? Hell yeah! Are their products really any greener? Well, let's see.

Palmolive, under Colgate, has a new Pure + Clear dishwashing liquid. "No Unnecessary Chemicals", they say. Hmm. What do we deem necessary chemicals? I looked at the list of ingredients, and it still seems to have plenty of chemicals. That aside... does this one product make up for all the other products Colgate manufactures that all still have the "unnecessary" chemicals? And if they aren't necessary in one product, why are there necessary in all the others? I don't get it. And I don't fall for it. You'd think with a pleasant name like Palmolive, two nice trees, they'd be a little better at this.

These companies seem to think that they can just take the color out and make something clear and VOILA suddenly we're led to believe it's oh-so-much better for the planet. And we'll fall for it. And sometimes we do. I say, let's not. Just because a company makes ONE "green" product, that does not excuse all the other products they continue to make.

Best to look for companies that actually dedicate their entire model to being Earth-friendly. There are plenty and more are coming out every day. As we continue to buy those products instead, the prices will come down, and these other super-companies will get the idea that we ain't fallin' fer their line 'o greenwashing no mo'! It's easy to do your part. Just talk with your dollars and your buying habits.