If you live alone and eat sandwiches like I do, you only have a few dirty dishes that will take forever to fill a dishwasher, so you just hand wash them. But most Americans live in families or groups of friends, and use dishwashers all the time even though they don't really know what's going on inside those things. Minute Food does the heavy lifting for you and explains what goes on inside the dishwasher that you can't see. They also explain in detail how you should load a dishwasher, which might resolve some family arguments. Dishwashers take a long time to run, but they save your time and labor, and they use the minimum amount of water to get the job done.
That said, I have the world's cheapest dishwasher, and it would not remove food from dishes even way back when it was new and worked. Don't buy the world's cheapest dishwasher.
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