If loading a dishwasher was a competitive sport, I’d win every time – five do’s and don’ts to achieve perfection
RISHI SUNAK says he has strong views about how to load a dishwasher.
Good to see the Prime Minister is focusing on the important stuff. No, seriously, I’m not being funny, this is important.
Rishi revealed in an interview that it’s his No1 chore and he even reloads the dishwasher after his wife Akshata Murty has done it.
But there’s a right way of loading, and several wrong ways. “What does it matter?” some people demand. What a question! Why does anything matter? Why does it matter how you dress? As long as you wear something, anything, you won’t die of cold or get arrested in.
But of course, doing anything properly all matters.
Around half of our households have a dishwasher. They take up a fair bit of space and they’re neither particularly cheap to buy, or run.
READ MORE FROM ADRIAN CHILES
So let’s do the job properly shall we? There are people who can load and people who can’t. And there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.
The ones who can’t, really can’t. Even the basics seem quite beyond them. I mean, I’m talking about not realising that if you put a mug in the right way up instead of upside down it will fill with dirty water. It’s that serious.
The strange thing is that the people who can load properly never seem to marry each other. In a couple, one can, and one can’t. It’s better this way.
Hopefully the one who can’t will be able to play a part in the unloading, but this isn’t the straightforward task you might assume. I mean, you can’t just take things out and put them away. Little bits of water will collect here and there, even in the most skilfully loaded machine, so you need a tea towel in your hand to dry as you go. Just saying.
Most read in The Sun
Anyway, sorry, I digress. Back to the loading.
I might be passionate about it for family reasons. My mum long ago lost the ability to find anything remotely positive to say about my dad, apart from this: “I’ll give him something,” she’ll admit. “No one can load a dishwasher like him.”
How right she is. No living being has ever managed to get more crockery, pans and cutlery in one load.
To watch him in action is to see what dishwasher loading is all about. I try to emulate him but realise I do so in vain. I am to him what Jordi Cruyff was to Johan Cruyff — competent but never in the same ballpark as the master.
Correct dishwasher loading is an art as well as a science, requiring extraordinary imagination, spatial awareness and patience.
It’s like three-dimensional chess, a fascinating, challenging jigsaw puzzle for you to complete every day. This is a daily opportunity for glory in your own kitchen. A chance for you to shine as brightly as those plates when they emerge.
Just how much can you get in there? This ought to be a competitive sport, or at very least a prime-time television series. Never mind MasterChef or Mastermind, let’s have Masterloader. I would say no to appearing on the first two shows, but I’d be first in the queue to appear on Masterloader.
I’d be the champion by such a margin that come the second series they would surely ask me to host it.
DOS
DO think of it as a puzzle, not a chore. You’re not so much loading the stuff as curating it. No two loads will look the same. Each one is a unique piece of art.
DO keep things as close together as possible without too much touching. Like a nightclub event for first dates only.
DO put bigger stuff in the bottom, smaller in the top. Sounds obvious, but many a novice has wrecked a load by trying to be clever.
DO load glasses or mugs with concave bottoms (most have) at an angle to avoid water pooling in them.
DO keep your salt and rinse aid topped up, even though it says “three-in-one” on the tablets. I don’t know why I do this, but please do the same – so I don’t feel foolish.
DON’TS
DON’T be be afraid of taking everything out and starting again. If you don’t begin in the right way, it will never work out. I’m sure Leonardo da Vinci threw several first attempts at the Mona Lisa in the bin.
DON’T bother loading anything which has had spinach in it. For some reason machine washing turns it into something approximating patches of green paint, which are just impossible to shift.
DON’T load cups the right way up, dummy.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
DON’T bother rinsing anything in the sink first. That’s cheating.
DON’T leave the unloading to anyone else. It’s your project, see it through to the end.