About a year ago, my wife and bought a house. It took us six months and exactly four offers before we got one. Funny thing to spend so much time and money on buying a house… to discover it didn’t even come with a dishwasher.
But we didn’t sweat it then, and a year in, I don’t regret it now.
In fact, I’ve always liked washing dishes. Weird thing to say, I know. I like it much better than doing laundry. Dishes give me an immediate satisfaction. You go from high entropy to low entropy in a matter of minutes. Laundry just takes too long, and it’s not as satisfying since the machines do all the work. In fact, if we had a clothesline in our backyard I’d probably enjoy doing laundry more.
I have a system down that I honed up at my family’s cabin where we also have survived for 80 years without a dishwasher. I rinse the largest dirty bowl, fill it up with warm, soapy water, and fill it with other dirty (but rinsed, quickly) items. Then I do a more thorough scrub in the soapy water, rinse off the suds using fresh water from the faucet, and place on the drying rack. When the drying rack is full, I bust out a dish towel and put them on the shelf.
Dirty to clean, disorganized to organized. It’s a beautiful thing.
I used to take dishwashers for granted. I don’t anymore. For centuries we’ve been using utensils and cookware that hasn’t gone through the magical germ-destroying electronic wash and rinse cycles and we somehow stayed healthy. That‘s what you worry about when not using a dishwasher, right? Cooties?
I guess I don’t really need one after all.