There may be no deeper sign of intimacy than knowing someone's system for loading the dishwasher.
How you load up a wash is a truly personal thing, and the source of many an argument in homes across the world. Aside from the "best" way to do it, is there a more economical way?
Agnes Bouchier Hayes, Home Economist and Lecturer at Technological University of the Shannon, joined Today with Claire Byrne to discuss how to load the dishwasher to save you money.
"It seems to be one of those ... small things that can cause blazing arguments", Agnes said. "It's amazing how many articles there are out there about people having great difficulty with filling the dishwasher. One person does it one way and the other thinks, no, I know better. And they rejig the entire inside of the dishwasher."
And that's before we even get to the unloading of the dishwasher and what comes out first.
First of all, Agnes says there's no need to rinse dishes anymore, thanks to the technology of dishwashers. "You can rinse them, but what you're doing there is using water that is unnecessary." Instead, she would suggest scraping leftover food off dishes before loading them up.
She added that eco-cycles are worth trying, despite seeming "counter-intuitive" because they take longer than a fast wash.
"The eco aspect comes with the amount of water they use, they use less water", she said. "But equally the energy that a dishwasher will use is mainly concentrated on heating the water, eco cycles runs at a lower temperature."
The savings you can claim by doing this are substantial, Agnes said. "What the longer cycles do is they leave the dishes soaped up for longer, that will mean the detergents will have longer to work on them and the water, the heat – even though it's a more gentle heat, 50 degrees maybe – it will actually clean your dishes better."
One of Agnes's biggest money-saving hacks for the dishwasher is to interrupt the drying period of the washes. "If you are in a little bit more of a rush, if you want things to be done a little bit faster, some of the newer dishwashers will pop open and they allow the steam out but more often than not there's a fan in the dishwasher and that dries the dishes."
However, if you drape a tea towel over the dishwasher door and close it over without fulling shutting it, the tea towel will absorb most of the steam.
She also noted how plastics don't dry well in a dishwasher, so she suggested taking them out and letting them air dry on the draining board.
For more tips on saving money on your dishwasher, listen back to the full interview above.
