I have a magnet that says "Clean" facing up, and "Dirty" upside down that I bought for $1 in 1998. When the dishes are emptied, or when someone starts the dishwasher, we spin the magnet so that the appropriate side is readable.

In hindsight, it is probably the most productive single dollar I've ever spent.

We have such a magnet for the dishwasher at work. Problem is that people are unreliable at actually flipping it. I just wish there were a display that would say what the current dishwasher state is.

If they don't already exist, there's got to be a market for dishwashers with a built-in clean/dirty indicator. With smart appliances nowadays, it doesn't even have to be a physical display (in the home.)

It's hard for the machine to actually know if it has been unloaded...

So many people in an office open the clean machine, remove one mug, and then close it again.

Should the machine now show dirty or clean?

It should clearly take a photo and blare the warning siren.

The weight of the drawers is a pretty easy indicator for of it was emptied since last wash. Until it hits empty+10% it's still clean.

At some stage it will be completely empty[1], so it should be possible to weigh the contents.

[1] No readonable person could possibly consider begin to fill it before it’s completely empty, right?

You get to a state where there’s one mug in the dishwasher. Can you tell if that’s clear or dirty without closet inspecting the mug (and even then depends on your definition of clean. Imagine you filled the mug with pee, then emptied it, then put it in the dishwasher. Could you be certain of knowing the state of that mug alone?

The heat of the items gives a clue, as does the number of clean looking items, but there are ways to break that system.

I have literally never once worried about whether my family are secretly peeing into mugs, emptying them and planting them into an empty dishwasher.

I guess now I will.

If you are weighing it just consider it dirty once the weight goes up. This will say clean even when empty but that seems not incorrect.

I think the only problem would be if someone removes the last clean item and adds a heavier dirty item at the same time.

My flatmate in university: "should I unload the machine? Nah I will just put my bowl dirty with yogurt in, to drip it onto the clean plates"

How would a machine even detect such situation?

Some machines, even very cheap ones, have an indicator light for the cycle finished. Some just show if the cycle is finished and so it indicates if someone has opened the door since then, but better ones keep that indicator lit until the next time the door is fully closed giving more control over the light.

Yeah, those magnets only work with people that read them. We also bought one for the cat because nobody knows who fed the cat, if anyone. The cat looks fat and every now and then someone gets a dirty bowl. The solution for the dishwasher is simple. I fire alarm in the dishwasher that goes off when this 2 events happen: 1. The door was open after a complete wash cycle. 2. 5 minutes have elapsed from the door opening and there still dishes inside.

Isn't there a more reliable indicator? That the contents are either clean or dirty?

If you didn't load the dishwasher it can be hard to say if the dishes are clean without being pretty thorough, which can take a few minutes. It would be nice to have instant certainty, I'm going to keep this in mind.

Depending on how full you load your dishwasher, that might require you to take out a dirty dish again to check… which strictly speaking, is a little gross for some unknown reason.

Not on my dishwasher. If the door gets closed, the clean indicator goes off. And my toddler loves to shut the door.

Good luck teaching such conventions to others, especially children.

If you can’t tell, you’re over rinsing your dishes.

You might have just eaten something dry, and when you put the dish/bowl in the dishwasher all the crumbs fell off.

Happens in certain offices I work in (I'm a consultant).

What I think happens is:

Someone puts a number of items in the dishwasher, some of which wasn't used at all, they came back on a trolley from a meeting.

Next person comes, checks two cups and think it is clean and than put everything in the cupboard.

I had a dishwasher at my last place, landlord special and everything. But it was smart, if you did a load of dishes, a little led would turn on saying it's done. The led wouldn't turn back off until the dishwasher was fully closed. So you could open it, be lazy and take a clean fork out, and then close it most of the way, and the clean light would stay on.

Yes! A magnet is an extra step, off the critical path. One needs to add soap eventually; why not use it as signal? This is the same principle I keep trying to explain to my college: Data should be entered ONCE then sourced everywhere needed.

This is my system for my work apartment. My wife rejects it at home, for reasons I don't understand well enough to relay. I go along, I want to stay married.

On that theme, why is this post about emptying a dishwasher? The crucial issue in most good marriages is how to load the dishwasher. Emptying is pretty obvious.

This is also my experience. My wife just delegates loading to me, I'm less stressed looking at the partially loaded dish washer and we're both happier.

Sometimes we cite from [0] to each other and laugh...

[0] https://youtu.be/29JPnJSmDs0

Hey, heads up - you should probably look into that speaker a bit more. I'm not disregarding everything, obviously there's some truth to what he's talking about - but he's got a very warped view on marriage, relationships and women in general.

I won't link anything, but I'll let you look it up yourself.

I think a lot of what that video latches on to is typically how our generation, and the generations before us have treated "dealing with problems". I think you'll find younger people will look at this video and go, "what the fuck".

Wiser words unlikely to be said. My wife wants the utensils up, they are up. I’m trainable and willingly adaptable.

Ironically, I recently got into a merge sort discussion with her regarding how to load utensils. Sorting on load reduced unload time, she got it but didn’t care for the detour in time complexity. She just gave me a snide look at that part.

> a merge sort

We use a bucket sort. My wife grudgingly conceded it was faster and doesn't hate doing the dishes as much as she used to (but I still do them most frequently).

Argh - I don’t think mine is ready for another sorting discussion but I’ll consider this for my future solo loading exercises!

Ugh, the resistance to such a simple and useful thing drives me nuts. I’ve also used the soap dispenser as an indicator, but I can’t get my wife to do the same or pay attention to the signal when it’s set. Moreover, she half pre-washes everything so I often can’t tell whether they’ve been fully washed or not.

Great idea for 95% of people, but just a reminder if you’re reading this and have a toddler: they are obsessed with dishwashers and will find a way to try and eat that soap.

Or maybe it’s just mine. Our dishwasher is shut and turned off at all times, I’m dreading the day our toddler has the finger strength to push the power button on.

Definitely keep the soap away from him, but let him watch you fill it, run it and empty it. Soon he'll get the hang of it and will be more than happy to help you.

Remote controlled plug in the socket behind the machine?

Better yet: whenever you put any quantity of dishes into the dishwasher: RUN IT.

The dishes found in the dishwasher will always be clean.

Dish soap and cycles are cheap. Storing dirty dishes in the dishwasher is madness. It's literally a machine with a button that makes them clean.

This uses more energy than needed. I only try to run full loads.

Running my dishwasher twice as much uses much less power each month than 24U of computers upstairs. It's not really that much in the scheme of things.

I've run my full size dishwasher with a single cup, single bowl, and single spoon in it. More than once.

It's a machine. It's okay to use it.

Ah yes, wasting energy is totally okay as long as there is something else that uses more energy.

So long as Google runs a huge fleet of servers, I sleep with all lights in my house on.

Dishwashers are about not wasting my time and energy, I couldn't care less about water or power savings.

Dirty dishes can be stored inside or outside the dishwasher. I wouldn’t even consider running a dishwasher at less than ~75% load, unless very unusual circumstances.

Which is why I, as a single household, don’t use mine.

I agree that I won't run it unless mostly full or special circumstances (going to cook a lot or have lots of people over) but I don't understand how small households don't use the dishwasher! Assuming you are eating most meals at home we (2 people) run the dishwasher about daily on average. Between pots, pans, food containers and plates I find it full up quickly. I think people who don't use it are just afraid to put cookware inside. Except for a few particular items you can get almost everything dishwasher-safe these days.

And even if you do have a period between cooking where it does sit for a few days running a dishwasher even a quarter full uses less water, power and soap than washing by hand. So doing that occasionally if it is starting to smell isn't an issue.

Two person house here, I just wash the dishes by hand. It doesn't take much effort, just a few minutes after a meal, they always come out exactly as clean as I want, and you can wash the dishes you prepped with while you cook (as long as it isn't an attention-intensive dish). It's also is friendlier to our painted ceramic bowls we usually eat out of.

Dish washers didn't seem worth it for two people in my opinion, either the dishes built up inside it and food dries on them to the point where the dishwasher didn't clean them properly, or I ran the washer with hardly anything inside it and felt like I wasted a lot of soap and water. Maybe it was simply too big of a dishwasher and that was part of the problem.

Dishwashers use much less soap and water than handwashing.

We had a high end home rental for a vacation a few years ago that had multiple dishwashers that were just being used as cabinets! It creates a whole new set of clean/dirty problems.

I assumed this was just a scam being pushed by dish soap companies in their commercials. I didn't think anyone actually ran mostly empty dish washers.

Dish soap and water are not free, even if you consider them cheap. I usually run my full dish washer once or twice a week. A regular container of dish washer pods has a little more than 60 pods and cost $20. Ignoring the water cost and assuming I always wash it twice a week I'm spending at most $40 dollars per year on dish washing pods, usually less.

If I follow your advice to the letter I'm running the machine three times a day, everyday so I'm spending $30 a month or $360 a year. Even once a day it's still $120. And ignoring the water cost.

All to not have to unload the dish washer when it's clean or spend an extra 15 seconds checking when lazy? Total waste of money.

Pods are ridiculous, it isn't difficult to squirt or pour soap in the holder in a reasonable amount. Buying non-pod soap is way cheaper

If you're doing full loads of laundry or dishes there isn't a difference. In the case of laundry you're probably using too much detergent if you're eyeballing it and using the same amount as pods if you're measuring.

Or the third option: measuring and using less than their recommended amount

Our system too! Glad to see we're not the only ones needing a solution to that problem.

You assume you can get everyone in your office to agree with this convention.

I must run a very disciplined household ;-)

Our system is: an open dishwasher can accept new dirty dishes.

So if the dishwasher is closed, it's either cleaning (put dirty dishes on the counter) or it's done cleaning. And when you open the closed dishwasher you immediately must transfer all clean dishes to the cabinets. And then it's able to accept new dirty dishes.

My shins wouldn't survive this

Presume they mean ajar, not fully opened

Newer dishwashers tend to automatically pop the door ajar to help dry contents. I go with that and tend to leave a clean dishwasher ajar. Also helps isolate stinky food items in a closed washer (I've never understood intentionally piling dirty things on the counter, or worse like my wife does, wet in the sink. I do it temporarily while lazy, but I consider that laziness not staging.)

Close-yes, Fill-maybe not. Use the dispenser as a marker is a good idea, but it is almost always dump and will ruin you soap. I use tablets which are even more sensitive to moisture, and are expected to stay dry and slowly dissolve in hot water.