September 14th, 2020Kyle’s Rant

Now for years, I have pre-washed the gunk off the pots, pans and plates but since this advert hit our screens, Donna has taken it upon herself to ban the pre-wash. She does scrap the contents into the food waste, but there is always something left stuck on the dishes.
And over the past few weeks, I have noticed the decline in cleanliness. It started with the wine glasses being a little foggy, and then small grains of food appeared, followed by the plates not having that same freshly washed sparkle. I think the trouble is that we are all eating at home more, doing a lot more experimental cooking and using ingredients that perhaps pre-pandemic never made it into the mix.
So I did some investigation on the offending appliance which led me directly to its filter, which was filthy. That got my full attention so I then ran the dishwashing apparatus through a small cycle and it suddenly stopped with a long intermittent beeping siren, sounding like I had just broken into a bonded warehouse on the docks.
I then turned to Google to try and decipher this particular fault code which turned out to be a blockage. Further investigations led me to discover three straws logged in the trap which was blocking the waterflow from the pump. Problem solved I thought.
The next day, laden with a plethora of plates covered with the residue of several speculative menu items from the night before’s festivities, I cranked the beast into life, waiting with bated breath for the one hour and 42-minute cycle to sparkle my dishes.
This was only met with disappointment, as I opened up the treasure chest of platters to once again reveal spotted glassware and dishes. At this point I declared war and did something completely foreign to me, I reached for the instruction manual.
I was delighted to find many other things can go wrong with these mystical dish cleaners, and better yet, the arms can also be removed and cleaned. That’s when I found huge lemon pips and lots of anaemic-looking enoki mushrooms hanging from the holes on the arms where the water usually comes out.
After a scrubbing session that felt like I was water blasting a large mining vehicle, I finally pressed my dishwasher back into service and it now spits out sparkling clean dishes just like on the picture of the dishwasher tablet packet. But really, the curious thing is how the straws and pips and enoki mushroom ended up in there. We’ve had none in the house for many months. Rinse your plate, rant over…