When the couples therapist inevitably asks, I’ll have an answer ready: The trouble began in August 2017, when my boyfriend and I moved in together, and I quickly revealed myself to be an absolute ding-dong at loading the dishwasher.
I am not what you would call “precise” or “tactical” in really any aspect of my life, but certainly not in front of an open dishwasher. I lack the structural engineer’s mind for space optimization, or maybe I lack the functional adult’s patience to figure it out. I don’t totally understand how the water moves around in there, or how the soap gets dispersed. (Also, because we’re being open and honest with one another, I have never been sure about prerinsing, though I do get the sense that the rules have changed recently?) I don’t have a philosophy about what should go on the top or the bottom—I basically just put things in the first semi-logical place I see, close the door, smash some buttons, and hope for the best. I walk away and hear my plates rattle.
Judging by the sheer volume of dishwasher-loading advice, commentary, and anxiety on the internet, I am not alone in any of this. There are YouTube videos with titles such as “You’re Doing It Wrong!” and “Passive Aggressive Tutorials.” There are articles broken out by brand and by subtopic, thousands of words devoted to the intricacies of scraping, stacking, sorting, eco-washing, half loads, knives, pots, plastic, and more. There is a post from a woman who doesn’t understand how her “genius” husband “can do ANYTHING, but load a dishwasher sensibly,” and one from a person whose wife does it like “an escaped mental patient.” There are Wirecutter articles explaining how to use one’s dishwasher better, and people who write into Wirecutter to complain that they don’t like the way the dishwashers in those articles’ photos have been loaded. There are so, so many guides for couples who can’t stop fighting about the dishwasher, a large number of which suggest that the issue might not be the dishwasher at all but perhaps something with its roots in childhood.