I cannot live without a dishwasher.

It’s true – It’s on “the list” of must-have’s when looking for off-base housing.  I’m spoiled that way.

You see, I hate doing dishes. Hate. H-A-T-E. Hate.

I didn’t mind it so much when I was a single girl living the good life in Dallas/Ft Worth. But having another person to dirty dishes in the house can surprisingly make a difference.

One of us rinses off the dishes & puts them in the washer. The other (and I’m not naming names) can tend to forget to rinse off the dishes entirely & totally forget we actually have a dishwasher you can put them in, only to allow them to sit out and dry & harden & cake-on & smell….well, you get the point…making any attempt to handwash them futile. (Love you, Baby)

This is our Korean dishwasher.

Don’t be fooled by it’s English ‘Digital Dishwasher’ name or it’s claims to ‘enhance the value of your life’.

For you see, that’s the only English on the thing.

Janice, our real estate agent extraordinaire, was gracious enough to label 2 of the 6 buttons & 1 of the digital displays.

But I digress…

Let’s turn the thing on, shall we?…Afterall, none of the other buttons work until you turn it on.

Oh look! There’s the power button….see? it says ‘POW-ER’.

Now for the tricky part.

First you have to remember to turn the hot water on.

Then it’s ‘button-button-who’s-got-the-button’ time!

Obviously the ‘start/stop’ labeled button will get things going, but what do the other buttons do?

Small loads? Heavy-duty pots & pans?…Quick rinse?…I have no idea what a fourth button would be.

So I randomly pick a button just to see what comes out. I like to think I’m in Vegas playing blackjack…

Hit me!

So far they all clean, but I can’t help but wonder if one of them would use less electricity than another.

(Our electric bill was atrocious last month. They actually charge us for owning a TV, but that’s a story  for another time.)

So here’s where a little math comes into play.

The dish cycle takes about 112 minutes. But that’s an awful long time to leave the hot water on – burning up our oil bill & electricity bill.

So if you leave the water on a good 30 minutes it will be hot enough to last the entire cycle.

But again, you gotta remember to turn the water off. Which leads me to…

Korean Life Lesson #3: It’s good to run the dishwasher in the morning when you can remember to turn the hot water off after 30 minutes – rather than fall asleep leaving it on all night.