The quiet pleasure of washing up (and why I'm still buying a new dishwasher)

I have been having trouble with my dishwasher. It’s seven and a half years old, and it’s manufactured by a German company called Miele. Several important people told me at the time that anyone who was anyone had a Miele dishwasher, so naturally I bought one. I found it perfectly satisfactory until a couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly stopped working; so I called up Miele and they sent someone to investigate. He said he’d repaired it and charged me £117 for the visit. But when I turned it on afterwards, the lights fused. So another Miele man came and said that his colleague hadn’t noticed that it was in fact a wreck and would need £500 spending on it for it to work again. So I took his advice and, instead of getting it repaired, ordered a new Miele for £599, the cheapest one on offer. This is due to arrive next week. Meanwhile, there is still a large mound of dirty crockery waiting for attention.

This has got me wondering whether there is really any point in dishwashers. Of all the labour-saving appliances developed in the last century, it is perhaps the least useful. Washing up by hand is not particularly burdensome — it can even be quite pleasant and therapeutic. Yet once you have a dishwasher, it is impossible not to use it. If you have only one dirty coffee cup to wash, something prevents you from rinsing it under the tap. Into the dishwasher it must go. And there it must languish until the machine is full and the long washing cycle begins.