Dishwasher
Our new dishwasher has changed my life.
When we first moved into our villa, after a few months, Junkyu found us a used dishwasher on Naver 중고나라 and it was only ₩80,000 so he snatched it up. I think we did use it sometimes, but honestly I don’t have as many memories of loading it as I do just doing the dishes by hand.
When I lived at home, my mom always used the dishwasher but also did a lot of things by hand, too. Once I left for college, I didn’t have one. When I lived alone, I only used a few dishes here and there - cups, bowls, spoons, and the occasional frying pan. It was fine just doing them by hand, but I remember telling Junkyu on the phone when I we were dating long distance that when we got married, we should share household responsibilities. In particular, I told him that I adamantly hated doing the dishes and that should be his chore. In reality, that never materialized - I ended up doing dishes most of the time. Especially because he would cook Korean food most of the time and it was a trade-off.
For just the two of us, washing things by hand was usually fine. If had had lots of people over, we would use it and always sighed in relief that we owned one.
So I always thought, “Yeah, we have a dishwasher!” And because most/many Korean households don’t have one, it felt like a source of pride. However, looking back now, as of the past week or so, I don’t feel like we even really *had* a dishwasher!
The old one, an LG Dios, was a 6-person dishwasher with two sliding racks. The size was perfect for putting it on our counter to the left of the sink - it’s a space I wasn’t going to use for anything else anyway, it’s a good place for it when we needed to load it with dirty dishes, and I need all of my cabinet space for storage. My friend who just moved into a new apartment finally got one - a 12-person (full-size) dishwasher that they had built into a cabinet space. She was excited about getting hers since she’d never had one before and didn’t grow up using one, either.
So when ours gave us an E1 error (definitely wasn’t the first time for this) saying the water wasn’t draining properly, I asked Junkyu to have someone come by and fix it, but he was skeptical they would even bother with it being so old, and he thought this would be a good opportunity for us to just buy a new one. We recently switched from a gas range to an induction stove, so we’d been to appliance stores a lot to look around, and we sometimes saw newer models of dishwashers. We also got a new cutting board (end-grain wood) and I replaced our kitchen floor mats. The kitchen feels very updated and new, and we got excited about getting a new dishwasher to kind of complete it.
When I had our postpartum doula over, she kept making remarks like, “Tell your husband to buy you a dishwasher!!” And I thought, “We already have one!” so I never really cared about getting a new one. And to be fair, she was suggesting we get a BIGGER one - built into a lower cabinet. Which I didn’t really want. But once ours was giving me errors, not washing things properly, and becoming an eyesore with how dated it looked/felt, I started to like the idea of a new one. I mean, who doesn’t like new, shiny toys? (And as fully functioning adults, toys = appliances!)
But Junkyu also started sending me links to new ones, and at first I wasn’t seeing how they would be *better* than the one we had. But then I saw how some of them had totally different layouts than ours. Some had one rack instead of two, making the space inside a lot bigger, and they touted their ability to clean quietly and in under an hour. I started dreaming of an easier way to do the dishes, and he found one from Cuckoo (the same company we bought our rice cooker and induction stove from) that was the same size as ours but very sleek looking, quiet, and it had a really cool “shelf” for cups and indents for wine glasses, etc. and it was new and was even being discounted!
I think he was more willing to get a new one than I was, but once he ordered it, I also got pumped to have it and start using it. I was tired of not even having the option of using ours, since it wasn’t working at all. I think when you miss having something (even if you barely used it) it starts eating at you to find an upgrade.
The new dishwasher arrived in a huge box that sat outside our door in the hallway for a few days. I waited around one afternoon for the guy who was scheduled to install it to come, and he ended up being late and I had to go out and pick Sejun up, but once we got back home, he had it running already and was carting the old one out. I was so excited about having it and hearing it working that I didn’t even really check anything on it. He DID explain how to use it, but I was sure I could figure it out, so I let him leave before I realized the hose that the drain water comes out of was routed to empty into our sink instead of having a dedicated line under the counter where you can’t see it. Junkyu noticed when I showed it to him on Facetime and said, “Why didn’t you ask him to put it under the sink?”
Thankfully, though, Junkyu said he called the guy back and found out that it’s easy to put the hose under the counter by ourselves, so he said he’d get around to that (as of writing this - he has! It’s all good now.)
But holy smokes - the new dishwasher is a dream come true! It’s like we went from not having one at all to having one that’s perfect - night and day. It’s so much easier to load because all of the things in the rack are very easy to manipulate and the little “shelf” for cups and small things can be folded away. The utensil holder can slide into different positions, and the whole thing is just so much easier to load. I don’t feel like I am frustrated or fighting it when putting dishes in now. It also uses “rinse” which is a new concept for dishwashers where you fill up a little tank and it uses some each time. The rinse is supposed to help the dishes dry without spots and streaks and prevents buildup from hard water, which Korea has. Also - there is a door that opens and closes for the detergent whereas the one we had before was just an indent. So the detergent will work at a certain time during the wash instead of hanging out in there when you close the door.
It’s is definitely quieter, too. Our old one made a grinding noise and was so loud that my son would hate whenever I turned it on and when he was younger, he’d sometimes go and press the power button to turn it off! It’s also much faster - a one hour cycle instead of two hours - so that means that I no longer feel like it would just be faster to wash things by hand. I also timed myself and it only took 4 minutes to load - which is great because I feel like I stand over the sink doing dishes by hand for a good 30-40 minutes each time.
Now, it feels like it’s easier to just load it up than to slave over the dishes myself. I’ve also noticed a LOT less water pooling on the dishes. Our old one had a drying function, but even after that, I’d go to take the dishes out, and tons of water would spill off of the top of my bowls or crevices on the dishes, and that was so aggravating.
The door is different, too. The Dios had two doors that opened in the middle and one would slide over the top of the dishwasher. It meant that loading dishes, I had less room to pull the racks out, and I always spilled a lot of water on the floor. This one has one door that automatically opens when it’s drying, so it dries everything better and doesn’t keep moisture trapped inside. It’s also bigger, so I have more room to slide the rack out. The new one has a rubberized finish to the racks, whereas the old one had metal racks that made the dishes clang every time I put anything on them and it was a horrible sound. It’s much more pleasant now.
The affect this new dishwasher has had on my mental health is amazing. I used to be so annoyed whenever we’d use a lot of dishes because it meant I’d have to wash them and it felt like I was washing the same things over and over and over. My anxiety was so bad just thinking of UGH another chore I had to do. But now I think, “Eh, I’ll get them done soon enough!”
As a mom of two, my life is constantly cleaning up after people. This has helped me feel like things are more under control. I have been decluttering and organizing our house as much as I can whenever I have time and energy and it’s helped a lot. Having the new dishwasher be quiet, clean, easy to load and unload, fast, and pretty? It’s just made my life so much easier.
It might seem like a trivial thing - that I got a new dishwasher to replace our old one - but it’s actually improved my mood and even my kid has noticed how much less stressed I am at bedtime because I can just load it up, press start, and hear the soft swooshing of the water. He even came over one night and said, “I want to watch you do it!” instead of going in his room to play! Calmer parents, calmer kids.
Sometimes, something simple like upgrading something that was never actually useful or helpful in the first place is actually life-changing and I’m sorry we never did it sooner. I appreciate the new one so much more now because of the fact that the old one stopped working for a time, and because it’s such an upgrade from the old one.
At first, I didn’t think we should spend the money on it, but now I see that it was an investment in our sanity and happiness. I wish everyone were able to have a nice dishwasher to make their lives that little bit easier. Now, I’m able to spend less time stressed at the sink and more time curled up with a book.
(I wrote this a while back and never posted it but I feel the same way. It’s been amazing to have less stress over doing the dishes. I highly recommend upgrading when things give you stress and anxiety!)
