I know some of you don’t own a dishwasher (the electric kind with buttons that does the work for you). We didn’t own one for the first ten years of our marriage, and since I didn’t know the difference, I didn’t mind at all. Today, if our dishwasher were to break, I would go right ahead and do all of our dishes by hand and be just fine.

But I have to say, I am very thankful that I have a working dishwasher. I use that thing like crazy, and find that it saves me a lot of time. We do have to rinse our dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, but I’d have to do that before washing them too, so the dishwasher definitely saves me a step.

With the kids gone last week, I found that I only needed to run the dishwasher once every other day. Wow! That felt so strange to me. Why? Because I run it a minimum of twice a day on a regular basis, and if we have company or I’m doing extra cooking for the freezer, I sometimes need to run it a third time. And trust me, the dishwasher is crammed full each time I run it.

Here it is this morning, ready for our boys to unload (and reload after breakfast!).

Plates, mixing bowls, stainless steel pots and pans, utensils, jars, casserole dishes, glasses – we go through a lot of dishes each day. It made me curious…how often do you run your dishwasher?