Is a dishwasher beneficial or not?

is PMM beneficial Those who have already bought a dishwasher or just want to buy it are interested in the question: is the dishwasher profitable at home, or is it nothing but a myth invented by advertisers and manufacturers of household dishwashers? The question is really very serious, because the purchase of a dishwasher or its further use depends on the answer to it. Let's try to be as objective as possible and draw conclusions based on real tests.

How much money does a dishwasher save?

There are quite a few conventions in this matter. Savings will depend on the model of the dishwasher, the intensity of its use, tariffs for water and electricity, the composition and cost of detergents and salt, etc. Nevertheless, we decided to go for an experiment and calculated how much money it saves.Bosch dishwasher SMV23AX00R per month, serving a family of 3 people.

A water heater is installed in the house, so we calculated in advance how much cold water and electricity a family spends on washing dishes. It turned out that a month a family spends 1.5 cubic meters of cold water on washing dishes manually (pouring terribly, it can be more economical) and about 29 kW of electricity (+ -5 kW). Despite the fact that family members do not wash dishes with hot water, but warm.

1 cubic meter of cold water costs the family about 17 rubles, and one kW of electricity is 3.95 rubles.
25 rubles 50 kopecks - water, 114 rubles 55 kopecks - electricity.
Add up the costs and get 140 rubles 5 kopecks.

But that is not all the costs. To wash the dishes manually, you will need a detergent and a sponge. For a month, the sponge deteriorates completely, so we can include the cost of one sponge in expenses, this is about 10 rubles. Now a detergent. Inexpensive detergent can be bought for 90 rubles. The package contains 0.5 liters of funds, which is enough for about 3 months - 90/3 = 30 rubles. To summarize: 140.05 + 10 + 30 = 180 rubles 5 kopecks. If you do not take into account some errors in the calculations, this is the monthly cost of a manual dishwashing.

Now let's calculate how much money you need to wash the dishes for a month using the Bosch SMV23AX00R dishwasher. Provided that the equipment was turned on strictly once a day in the evening, to wash the dishes that had accumulated during the day and worked on the usual program for 2 hours 10 minutes, it spent 63 days of electricity in 30 days. 63 * 3.95 = 248 rubles 85 kopecks. For one sink, our machine consumes 11.7 liters of water. We multiply by 30 days, we get 351 liters, that is, 0.351 cubic meters. 0.351 * 17 = 5 rubles 97 kopecks. Add up the costs of water and electricity 248.85 + 5.97 = 254 rubles 82 kopecks.

Of course, this is not all costs. The most important expense item has not yet been calculated by us, namely, the costs of detergents and salt.

Our family used Somat tablets to wash dishes in the dishwasher. They are inexpensive and wash well. A box of 84 capsules was purchased for 313 rubles. In one month, exactly 30 capsules were spent. Using simple calculations, we calculated that 1 capsule costs about 3 rubles 73 kopecks. 3.73 * 30 = 111 rubles 90 kopecks.

These were the costs of the detergent. Now let's calculate the cost of salt. We used Elly salt, which costs 200 rubles per 3 kg. A little less than 1 kg of salt was spent per month. To make it easier to consider rounding costs up to 1 kg, this is about 66 rubles 66 kopecks.

Well, we finally came to the most interesting, the addition of all costs. So, 254 rubles 82 kopecks - water and electricity, 111 rubles 90 kopecks - detergent, 66 rubles 66 kopecks - salt. 254.82 + 111.90 + 66.66 = 433 rubles 38 kopecks. That is how much the Bosch SMV23AX00R dishwasher spent in 1 month of operation. Total: 180 rubles 5 kopecks - manual washing and 433 rubles 38 kopecks - machine washing.

Do not wash without wet hands

So is a dishwasher or a hand dishwasher better? Conclusions are difficult to make because not everything is measured in money. Many families are even willing to overpay for a bit of comfort. It is so great to load dirty dishes into baskets, and the machine will do everything for you, you don’t even need to wet your hands. An advertising image of a happy hostess pops up before my eyes, but let's get back to reality.

Not all dishes fit perfectly and are washed perfectly in the dishwasher.Large baking sheets, trays, vats in the machine either do not fit at all, or fit in, but they are not washed well. They have to either be washed from scratch or washed behind a dishwasher, which is doubly unpleasant.

Go ahead. Not all items can be washed in a dishwasher. For example, you used a meat grinder. It is strictly forbidden to wash its aluminum parts in the car, otherwise they will turn black and they will have to be thrown out, which means mine by hand.

Wooden cutting boards, wooden spoons and spatulas, also deteriorate in the dishwasher, they are also washed exclusively by hand. In fact, there are many examples. And this means that before you turn on the machine, you must sort the dirty dishes. Wash something with hands, and something in the car. In general, you will have to wet your hands anyway, even if you have a dishwasher, at least not. Yes, and you have to spend time:

sort dishes;
put the dishes in baskets;
wash with hands those items that cannot be washed in the machine;
wash the sink and faucet after all.

The dishwasher itself also needs to be washed sometimes from dirt, otherwise it will stop working normally, and this is most often done manually.

Myths about the advantages of a dishwasher

After such calculations and reasoning, you begin to seriously think: continue to use the dishwasher or wash the dishes with your hands. Those who do not have a dishwasher yet, after reading this article, will probably think about it. We would not like to oppose dishwashers, however, listening to the arguments of the sellers of dishwashers, we cannot "not turn on a sober look." Some of the pluses of the dishwashing equipment that they voiced look very implausible.

The dishwasher takes up little space in the kitchen. Usually they say so about narrow dishwashers with a case width of 45 cm. Indeed, the phrase “not enough space” is of a pronounced evaluative nature, but if you look at the small-sized kitchen of an average Russian, you want to cry. It's not like a dishwasher, a microwave can be crammed with difficulty. Items stand on top of each other so as not to turn around.
A dishwasher helps save the family budget. We devoted the first paragraph of our article to this. The statement, frankly, is unfounded.
The dishwasher helps to stop washing dirty dishes by hand. We made several points that helped to understand that a complete rejection of the manual washing of dishes is possible only if you hire a housekeeper. A dishwasher will facilitate the task, but it will not work out completely to refuse a manual wash.

So, perhaps some of our calculations and arguments may seem “far-fetched” to you, but on the other hand, we did not claim to be 100% accurate. Our calculations were initially positioned as approximate, but even they make it clear that operating a dishwasher is incomparably more expensive than if you washed the dishes by hand. Make your own calculations and make sure that we are right. Good luck