Well, it’s Wednesday, which, once upon a time, was a Do {Stuff} Better day around here. Let’s return to that. Today, some tips on washing your dishes.

Yep. We did it. Remember when I went on and on about all the tiny little machines I was going to buy to automate my life? Well, you know how I feel about Oscar the Roomba, and we did try with a mini washer, but it just didn’t work for our configuration. I don’t know what took so long for the dishwasher. They’re big? They cost $250 + and that seemed like a lot to save a little bit (a lot) of whining on my part?

Well, I spied this one on our local online classifieds for $75 and pulled the trigger. Bret hauled it home, sweatily, a few days later, and the rest is history!

Er, not quite. First, the person we bought it from had left the adapter on her sink and couldn’t find her tools, so Bret went back over there and retrieved it. Then, we needed a new faucet. The faucet we had was some obscure European model (we think) that didn’t fit any adapters or aerators. We’d gone on an epic hunt for some kind of America-to-European converter, but they appear not to exist. Not being able to attach the washing machine to our sink is one reason we got rid of it, so this time around, I dispensed with the hunt and just bought a new faucet.

We got this one.

Looks good, right? We found this guy for about $30 on Amazon, and the reviews were great, so we went for it. And then it didn't get delivered and we had to order again, which we did...and then there were several days of wrestling with the old faucet and tracking down all the stuff we needed to make the switch. We spent some time with a giant useless white box taking up (precious) counter space, is what I'm saying.

But now it works! Thanks to Bret's can-do spirit, we got the old faucet off, this one installed, and the dishwasher in working order. The unit is supposed to hold six place settings, and the directions provide very specific loading instructions to maximize space and cleanliness. We've used it several times now, and when we use the most robust setting, we are very happy with the cleanliness of the dishes.

As for the fugliness of the big white box, the jury is out. I mean, no, the jury is in: The dishwasher is ugly. The aerator we had to put on the faucet to connect with the dishwasher? Also seriously ugly (scroll up one pic - also reminiscent of a little friend), and it's not a super pleasant water stream to deal with. It's a pain to switch back and forth between the regular aerator and this one, so we just have to get used to this one. What the jury is out for is as to whether it's worth it to have this thing around. Pros include that it washes the dishes. Cons include that it is a counter top dishwasher, so while it is yuuuuuge relative to our counter space, it is also fairly small in terms of dishes washed per cycle. Another small bummer: It uses the faucet while working, so you have to run it when you don't need the sink. Unrelated to the dishwasher itself, I am bummed that I bought a faucet we couldn't use our sprayer with -- I loved that sprayer, and it's been an adjustment to not have it. (The internet assures me that trying to hook a sprayer up to a non-dedicated faucet is a really good way to flood your kitchen).

Not be whiny: These are just the pros and cons, as I see them. For a little over $100 (including faucet and dishwasher), I will take all the help I can get. I have been washing daytime dishes by hand and saving the dishwasher for after dinner, but even that is a pretty nice luxury. It does make cleaning the kitchen go more smoothly, and that was something we were really hoping for. If anything, having this has just proven to us how much we'd like a bigger one. They make little rolley units that we could slide up against our island, which which would wash more dishes. I don't think we're going to switch over just yet, but if we make the call to stay in this apartment for a while longer, we may upgrade. The great think about our parents' listserv classifieds is that you can sell pretty much as easily as you can buy, so if we need to switch, it'll just be a matter of passing this along to another family.

PS -- There are affiliate links in the post, which means if you click on them and end up buying the product through Amazon, I get a small percentage of the sale. These are the things we're really using, and which I wholeheartedly endorse, so if you're in the market, thanks for supporting the blog!