Scrubba-Scrubba

Have I ever told you that I have a love/hate relationship with my dishwasher? 

On one hand, it washes the dishes. That's super awesome. Especially when you have 3 kids because children seem to require more dishes than adults do. Or is that just my children? Well, either way, all I have to do is rinse those dishes off and load them in there and that lovely dishwasher does the rest.

I'm also kind of head over heels for the way it looks. The front of it is integrated into the cabinets so you can't tell there's a dishwasher there. No ugly appliancey front in my kitchen. No, sir. 

But see...that's where the love ends.

Little did we know when we moved into this house, the water is really hard. And you're all sitting there like "oh, I have hard water...I totally feel ya." No. I mean no offense to you and your hard water troubles, but no. I promise you have no idea. I thought I knew all about hard water. And then we moved here.

Our dishwasher has this super fancy container (because I don't know what else to call it) in the bottom. It's where we have to put the 4 pounds of salt every month or so to soften the water. This little red, plastic button pops up (you know, like on a turkey) and telling me "hey lady, it's salt time!!" Well, truth be told, it's talking to the mister because I don't add salt to the dishwasher. I make too much of a mess with it.

Now this wouldn't be so bad, except that salt *sucks*. 

Every. single. damn. time we put salt in there, our dishes come out looking crazy.

Every time this happens I am forced to get out the toughest scrubbing pad I can find, turn the water to boiling hot and scrub the dishes (the ones I just put through the dishwasher) until my fingers are achy and bleeding from all the effort. (Ok, that's dramatic. They aren't really bleeding. But they are pretty achy.) And this process continues for about 4 loads of dishes. Washing in the dishwasher, rescrubbing, washing again.

So you could go ahead and tell me to wash the dishes by hand after we add the salt...because that would make more sense, right? But oddly enough, I never remember that it's going to do this until after they come out looking like they've been dipped in cornstarch. (Any other plans?)

So, dear dishwasher...you win again. Hopefully next month I will remember to at least run an empty load before I put the dishes in there for you to dirty, instead of clean.