Does a Dishwasher Save you Money? | Mum In The Madhouse

Does a Dishwasher Save you Money?

Does a Dishwasher Save you Money? is a paid post in collaboration with Sainsbury’s.  Since getting a smart meter a few months ago, the male proportion of the household has become obsessed with comparing the cost of devices in the house and one of the things that have come up is that using a dishwasher is more expensive than washing by hand.  Hmm – as the one who ends up doing any pots that need handwashing this made me decide to look into it.  As I LOVE my dishwasher, it saves me time as we fill it up during the day, set it to wash overnight and then the husbeast empties it before he goes to work and whilst he makes me a cup of tea in the morning.

Does a Dishwasher Save you Money?

There were a few things to consider.  The timesaving element, the environmental impact of using a dishwasher, the cost comparison and also division of labor.

Does a Dishwasher Save you Money?

A Dishwasher Saves Time 

From a time-saving perspective, the dishwasher wins every single time for me.  It is filled up as we use items, except cups as we use the same ones all day and then it takes seconds to set it (we never pre-rinse) and a maybe 5 minutes to unload and put away.  We all put our own items in the dishwasher, including the kids and the husbeast empties it every morning and pops the pots away. There is no arguing over who is going to wash and who is going to dry. No one gets stressed over dirty pots being left on the side late at night as we are too tired to wash them or the dreaded piling up of clean ones on the drainer.

A Dishwasher uses more water and power? 

Research carried out by Christian Paul Richter between 2007 and 2008 on two hundred households in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Britain, found that the households which had a dishwasher used on average 50% less water and 28% less energy than the households that didn’t own a dishwasher. According to the Energy Saving Trust dishwasher energy rating matter as you can save up to £6 more a year by using an energy efficient dishwasher.

So Does a Dishwasher Save you Money?

There doesn’t seem to be any definitive answer. It depends on the size of your family, the temperature of your water, the type of fuel you use to heat your water and also if you only use the eco setting on your dishwasher and run it when full.  I have decided that a dishwasher makes my life easier and in all likelihood saves me money, so will continue to use it without any guilt!

One thing I can control is how we use the dishwasher, so in addition to running it on economy overnight, we run it when full.  It is also key that the dishwasher actually cleans the dishes so that we do not need to redo them. So it is also important when choosing a dishwasher tablet as they differ hugely in price.  So when Sainsbury’s asked us to test out the new Prism dishwasher tablets against our usual tablets I was really interested to see if they did a good job.

Prism is exclusively available at Sainsbury’s. In two fragrances, lemon and original, and cost £4 for a pack of 25 and claim to remove every hard-to-remove stain – without pre-soaking and out-perform the market-leading brands. Purley on a cost basis it would save around £51 a year on average. But only if they worked. We have previously tried numerous supermarket ranges and our dishwasher doesn’t seem to like the hard powder tablets and we use Fairy Platinum now. So the proof is in the pudding or the porridge in our case!

As I have said we always run the dishwasher on an evening on eco mode.  We all stack the dishwasher as we go during the day and are not really too precious about it.  So I bet you are dying to know just how well it did.

Let me put it this way, the husbeast couldn’t even tell that I had changed the dishwasher tablets.  Prism tabs are liquid and powder capsules like the ones we use on a regular basis and are around half the price at 16p a capsule rather than 30.6p a capsule. They did a fabulous job on everything.  No tear stains on the cups, no residue on the slow cooker and no porridge left in the bowls.  The glasses were left sparkling and we will be buying them again in the future.  We are converted and I am sure you will be too if you give them a try.

Does a Dishwasher Save you Money? Can you save cash and the environment by not washing your dishes by hand?

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