Home Truths reporter Ian Peacock met up with John and Caroline to thrash out the niceties of dishwasher protocol ...
John and Caroline are in their late forties. John has lived alone for sometime and is meticulously organised, whereas Caroline has battled it out with a houseful of children for much of her adult life. They鈥檙e now considering moving in together, but first have to negotiate just how they are going to merge their entirely different styles of using the dishwasher.
John's view is argued with the conviction of one who knows he is right, "I just think you should rinse things before you put them in ... to me there鈥檚 nothing worse than coming out with food stuck on the plates... Now look, that has a coffee stain - very simple - clean the coffee off it before you put it in the dishwasher. It鈥檚 not really washing up - it鈥檚 just a simple case of rinsing."
Caroline comes back with a strong rebuttal, "I find his approach quite ridiculous. I always thought that a dishwasher was to save you time and trouble, and stop the kitchen from looking a terrible mess - you hide dishes in a dishwasher - but he leaves them lying around in the kitchen!" Caroline wonders if John is really making some sort of value judgement about her on the basis of her dishwasher methodology, "He thinks I鈥檓 a really dirty sort of person because I put toast-crumbed plates into the machine..." In her eyes, though, it is John who is revealing his personality, "He鈥檚 a washing up man with a little moppet, and that鈥檚 way he鈥檇 prefer to do it. He鈥檚 just trying to get into the modern age by buying a dishwasher. Really and truly he鈥檚 not a proper owner..."
Common ground has been found. John has learned to compromise his rigid approach to dishwasher behaviour. He now allows the knives to go into their little dishwasher basket blade down, not up, (which is undoubtedly the correct position for anyone who knows anything at all about dishwashers).
