And assuming that you have more money than time, which isn't true for everyone.
If you don't spend the $1,000 then your ongoing costs are lower (a dishwasher lasts maybe 10 years, call it $100/yr - ignoring the operating costs since you're probably using a dishwasher the same number of times per year), that could be an income stream of about $50/yr - by FIRE logic you're probably $150/yr closer to not having to work any more and you have a bigger buffer for surprises along the way. Those are some pretty significant swings for most people.
It isn't economically clever to have 2x as much personal capital on hand as you need unless you are fabulously wealthy already.
Right now, our dishwasher's top rack is full of top rack stuff, whereas the bottom rack has two dishes and a coffee cup. I guess we go ahead and run it, and then... move everything from the second dishwasher to that one? This is definitively more work.
And yeah I thought about this years ago and ruminated on these issues.
And furthermore, if I just have two dishwashers, both of which are considered "dirty", I no longer have clean plates.
Unless, of course, I unload it to the cabinets. Which I do now. Without paying $800 for a second dishwasher.
No, it's probably about three-quarters empty, because you probably use roughly the same crockery every day, unless you do something particularly bizarre like having three soup-based meals one day and three plate-based meals the next. Sometimes you wash a couple of plates that were already clean, sure. Or you move them into the "clean" dishwasher before declaring the other one "dirty", which is no more effort than putting them into cabinets (often less). And sure maybe a couple of days a year you have a big party, or really do eat soup every meal, or something, and you have to do something different. But the vast majority of the time it makes life easier.
I clean mine ones in couple weeks, there is some gunk building up by the doors, filter of course, so just wipe it and then run once on highest temp and so far no smelly dishwasher - but still if I would just left dishes after cleaning for 2 days I would have to run some cleaning again because they would not small bad but somewhat "not clean" for sure.
It becomes absurd faster when you consider what a realistic household would own and eat and use. "There's no unloading necessary," he says. Absolutely ridiculous.
But you have to go to something close to 'we only eat cereal' for it to sort of work, which is crazy (and not healthy).
It's a bit like telling people to be like Steve Jobs and have a single outfit, your laundry will be so much easier, your wardrobe so much neater: sure, but it turns out most people actually don't want that... So it's really neither here nor there what problems it might solve.
So you end up washing those 15 spoons again. Big deal. Or you notice that you consistently have leftover spoons in the clean dishwasher and put some into storage, or get rid of them.
On average you use more or less the same dishes each day, so you reach equilibrium pretty quickly. You wash a bit of stuff that was already clean. It's no big.
Maybe one day someone makes a dishwasher that can do continuous washing efficiently, dynamically adjusting for the number, type and locations of the dirty kitchenware. Until then, it feels super wasteful.
It does, but our feelings are likely miscalibrated here. Dishwashers are insanely efficient.
> You use more water, more salt/dishwasher cleaning chemicals, and more electricity on empty runs.
Unlikely. You're still running the same programme at the same frequency (you were always going to run the dishwasher when you ran out of bowls, the only difference is you have some extra clean spoons in the dishwasher when you do).
> The clean dishes and utensils getting extra wash degrade faster
Technically true, but when was the last time you had to replace a spoon because it had worn out? And how much did it cost when you did?
> the machine itself wears off faster too.
Maybe. Not convinced. You're not putting any extra dirt in it, and the sprayers etc. are likely designed to handle a full load (e.g. the shelves will always be balanced, because you'll always have a full set of dishes when you run the dishwasher).
???
For example, 10 bowls, 10 spoons, 10 forks. If the make are fork-using salads and spoon-using soups, the shared resource--bowls--will run out before anything else does.
At least 3 dishwashers are needed.
After all, the universe has only two kinds of problems: those solved by queuing theory, and those solved by category theory. Or so hanging out on HN would have me believe.
Independently of cost and space considerations, why would you want such a ”system” as this dual-dishwasher setup?
I take aesthetic pleasure in unloading the machine in the morning and restoring my cabinets to a condition of full, orderly, clean stock. My relationship with the machine is as a tool that transitions items from dirty to clean, and it’s aesthetically displeasing to mix those purposes with the ordered, dry, clean cabinets. Those are places where you know you’ll always grab a clean item without having to check a post-it note first.
I take pleasure in owning the right cutlery and servingware for a wide variety of food and situations, and in using the correct subset for the correct occasion. The idea that I would use everything from the Clean Washer every time I fill the Dirty Washer utterly confuses and repulses me.
This, like essentially all of this person’s examples, reminds me of this Chesterton’s Fence kind of thing the rationalist types get on about: if a bunch of people are doing a thing, take the time to ask why before you assume your One Bright Trick is something new under the sun.
That plate needs a resting period first.
I tried to apply some of Rory's advice to a real product - basically, some combination of "give a longer wait time than the actual time for better experience / improve the experience of the euro tunnel by putting Wifi on it for $1m rather than spending $100m making it faster" (I know the real sums were much bigger).. and the idea of "live in the South of London because it's not on the Tube map so the prices are much cheaper yet the travel distance is the same!"
The result? Sales dropped when we gave a longer wait time, which was not compensated by repeat business.
I lived in a place in South London. Without night transport options, I couldn't stay out on a night out without forking over crazy money for Taxis. And the other major thing I noticed? Not a single woman I met in that time had any interest in coming back to my place, in the part of London she didn't know, without many options to Uber back to her place if she wanted etc. The only person I met in this time when I was single yet on paper successful took me back to their place. I couldn't figure it out but I felt dissatisfied. I moved then to a much more central place (yet the same cost) and started a casual relationship within a couple of months of being there. Trust me when I say, everybody generally preferred parties and hanging out at a place on the Tube.
I suppose I love Rorys ideas and they captivate me, the comparisons with nature are great. But the content is as much advertising as it is about the psychology of advertising and human tricks. The problem is Rory doesn't consider that for a young man you might want to be able to get night transport or that a young woman you meet might prioritize safety and familiarity, wanting to know the area better, be closer to their home and have transport options. A place away from Tube Stations also by virtue of it's costs is more of an honest signal that you don't have the money to live in central/"tube" London if you wanted to. As a young man, if I had realized that, I obviously should have lived like my peers a few tube stops away or in a nice house several towns away. So basically deviating from the social peer norm generally has costs. It's easy to point out one trick benefits but you miss out on what you don't observe.
"You could buy one variety of socks and you'll never have to worry about sorting them!" -> "Well, I have two jobs and they both require I wear uniform socks in different colours so this won't work for me, Mr. Smarty Socks Pants"
"If you place a dishwasher pod in the slot as soon as you empty the dishwasher you'll know if it's dirty or clean when you open it" -> "Well, I can only afford a single dishwasher pod at a time and I put my dishes away in the morning, go to work and use the day's wages to buy the one I'll use that night, so that won't work for me Mr. Richy Two Pod Pants"
"If you put your weighing scale in the bathroom it'll make it easy for you to measure your weight every day" -> "Well, my bathroom is too small and doesn't have level flooring anyway because it's wide enough for one man and is located on the San Andreas fault with a crack going through it. So that won't work for me Mr. Flat Floor Pants"
"If you use shellcheck, you can catch a bunch of errors in your shell scripts" -> "Well, I use my custom shell CrazySH and shellcheck won't work on that. So that won't work for me Mr. Normal Shell Pants"
I wonder if it is possible to construct a suggested thing that no human could respond to in this way. I think it's impossible. But what do I know. I'm just Mr. Can't Comment Pants.
What makes you believe that? In my professional setting (think restaurants for instance) dishwashers are actually at countertop level to improve staff efficiency.
And while I not aware of any dishwasher design that allows to put it higher than countertop level, I don't see any impossibility either: you just need it to be unloadable from below.
There's a typo here, as I wanted to say “many”. (It's more like a lapsus than a mere typo actually since I had the dishwasher of the restaurant I work at as a student in mind when I wrote this comment)
While less common in domestic kitchens, "raised" dishwashers are a thing. A friend of mine designed his dream kitchen and his dishwasher (just a standard domestic dishwasher) is at about hip height, next to the cabinets where dishes are stored and above the drawers that house heavier pots and pans.
Washers coarse sluice dishes and stack them in a circular rack on the bench, then use horizontal handle at front of washer to lift both the door on the left and the one on the right, the internal circular rack of freshly cleaned dishes is pulled out along the bench on one side, the just filled rack of dirty dishes is slid in on other side to replace, doors down, washer on, unstack clean dishes and move the empty rack back to the sink to start sluicing and stacking just arrived dirty dishes.
Repeat for three hours, then clean down kitchen and go home.
They do this at some places of work that I'm aware of. It's not "barking insane". However, some thought shows that it won't work for a lot of people.
Firstly, dishwashers have to live at ground level whereas crockery can be stored in a cupboard at any level. You are contraining yourself to store crockery at the ground level where most people also have their under-sink unit, laundry machine, and heavy pans cupboard.
Secondly, plates and utensils are way more spread out in a dishwasher. You have to expose every surface for them to be cleaned properly. Plus, there is the space needed for the dishwasher itself, which can be pretty chunky.
So no, Rory Sutherland, in our 2-bedroom urban UK house we definitely cannot afford the space to have a second dishwasher. And if your job is to go around blithely trying to convince everyone that they'd be better off with one, all you're doing is re-affirming my contempt towards behavioural scientists and salespeople.