Item (missing): dishwasher

I don't have a dishwasher here, but then I've never routinely used one anyway.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me as a 1-person household to use a dishwasher, since it would take a long time to get it up to a full load.  It might make more sense in a household of, say 7, but in that case I could just as easily have the younger members of the household do the dishes as chores.  Mean, huh.

Thinking about it, to use a dishwasher you still have to rinse dishes off to begin with, plus load and unload and then sometimes do some touch-up washing or drying at the end.  There was a study that, if I remember correctly, I read about in the Utne Reader years ago that took into account all these factors and computed how much time different devices actually saved, and for a dishwasher it worked out to something like 3 minutes a day.

So I'm not convinced that it saves any significant time.  It is kind of nice to be able to just shut the door and press a button, but even that doesn't quite get you away from the drudgery.  It removes you somewhat from the actual soap and water and gunk, but it's still not quite as easy as it seems like it ought to be.  What would be really great is the sort of magical cartoon-like machine where you don't even have to touch anything, you just send the dishes through and they come sparkling out the other side.