On Why Small Bottles of Clear Dishwashing Liquid Do Not Belong Under The Sink
Last night, when we finished playing on the new Wii and had had scriptures and prayer, I asked our two teen boys to do a load of dishes before bed. After a very small whine (just enough to let me know that they are too big to be bossed, but not too big to obey), they both scurried up the stairs and got busy. A little while later, I came upstairs and Son Three stood up from where he had been bending over the dishwasher door fiddling with a small screw-in plug: "I noticed that the Jet-Dry dispenser was empty, so I filled it up." "Thanks," I said.
Then I noticed the bottle in his hand.
"Did you fill it up with that?" I asked, pointing to the small bottle of clear Palmolive concentrate.
"Yeah, why?"
Oh dear. Or, as Piglet would say: Oh d' d' dear dear dear.
It's like those bar exam review questions testing on the function of intent in a common law intentional tort or specific intent crime. Absent intent, no tort and no crime. What do you do about someone who did something really really really bad, when thought he was doing something good? I mean, think about it... A fourteen year old boy thought on his own to put rinse agent in the dishwasher. That act alone ought to be celebrated.
About then, my husband joined us. Our first thought was to run a rinse cycle, and maybe clear it out. Fortunately for us, I have somewhere in the vague recesses in the back of my mind a memory from childhood of once getting a little bit of dishwashing soap residue in the dishwasher, and the whole thing filling up with suds. And that was just a little bit of dish soap, not a whole rinse agent dispenser full, which is designed to squirt a little of its contents out on every load.
So now what to do? Well, first, we mopped up the bit spilling around the edges. I thought of the shop-vac, but it was a little more than quasi-attached to the woodworking equipment, so that wasn't an option. Fortunately, a long-nosed syringe left over from when Son One had his wisdom teeth extracted (it was for irrigating the cavity left behind, but he never bothered to use it) was on the kitchen window-sill (why? I wouldn't know... shows how much anyone's deep cleaned lately). So I began suctioning the dish soap out of the dispenser, while my husband went to find out from Google just how much trouble we were in.
After sucking out about 3 oz. of dish soap, the dispenser seemed empty, but knowing how soap is thick and sticks to the sides of things, we filled it up again with plain water. And sure enough, it was super soapy bubbly foamy when it came back out. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Do you realize how long it takes to do that with a 10 milliliter syringe, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a dishwasher door in your lap, while two teenaged boys are hand-washing dishes (ahem, read "getting everything in the immediate area wet") at the sink above you?
Anyway, it was still coming out foamy why my husband returned with a thoroughly investigated report: yes, this had happened to other people before. And yes, it is as bad a situation as we had guessed. And the only answer was to rinse and repeat, and hope you got it all out, or else take the dishwasher door off its hinge, take it apart, remove the dispenser, and either thoroughly scrub it out, or replace it altogether (the dispenser, not the dishwasher). Sigh.
Well, being at least three rinses along, (and it being about 10:30 on a Saturday Night) we decided to try helping it out and added to the rinse water a squirt of de-foaming additive (also found under the sink) left over from a previous Rug-Doctor rental. Sure enough, after two more rinses with this concoction, the water extracted from the dispenser was no longer sudsy and foamy. Now two rinses with plain water (so much for the early bedtime I'd hoped for), and it seemed pretty clean.
I closed up the dishwasher, and held my hand over the button ready to start a test rinse. With raised eyebrow, I looked at my husband. He looked at me. We took a deep sigh, and we realized we just didn't want to risk the mess.
"I'll take it apart on Monday morning," he said.
Then I noticed the bottle in his hand.
"Did you fill it up with that?" I asked, pointing to the small bottle of clear Palmolive concentrate.
"Yeah, why?"
Oh dear. Or, as Piglet would say: Oh d' d' dear dear dear.
It's like those bar exam review questions testing on the function of intent in a common law intentional tort or specific intent crime. Absent intent, no tort and no crime. What do you do about someone who did something really really really bad, when thought he was doing something good? I mean, think about it... A fourteen year old boy thought on his own to put rinse agent in the dishwasher. That act alone ought to be celebrated.
About then, my husband joined us. Our first thought was to run a rinse cycle, and maybe clear it out. Fortunately for us, I have somewhere in the vague recesses in the back of my mind a memory from childhood of once getting a little bit of dishwashing soap residue in the dishwasher, and the whole thing filling up with suds. And that was just a little bit of dish soap, not a whole rinse agent dispenser full, which is designed to squirt a little of its contents out on every load.
So now what to do? Well, first, we mopped up the bit spilling around the edges. I thought of the shop-vac, but it was a little more than quasi-attached to the woodworking equipment, so that wasn't an option. Fortunately, a long-nosed syringe left over from when Son One had his wisdom teeth extracted (it was for irrigating the cavity left behind, but he never bothered to use it) was on the kitchen window-sill (why? I wouldn't know... shows how much anyone's deep cleaned lately). So I began suctioning the dish soap out of the dispenser, while my husband went to find out from Google just how much trouble we were in.
After sucking out about 3 oz. of dish soap, the dispenser seemed empty, but knowing how soap is thick and sticks to the sides of things, we filled it up again with plain water. And sure enough, it was super soapy bubbly foamy when it came back out. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Do you realize how long it takes to do that with a 10 milliliter syringe, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a dishwasher door in your lap, while two teenaged boys are hand-washing dishes (ahem, read "getting everything in the immediate area wet") at the sink above you?
Anyway, it was still coming out foamy why my husband returned with a thoroughly investigated report: yes, this had happened to other people before. And yes, it is as bad a situation as we had guessed. And the only answer was to rinse and repeat, and hope you got it all out, or else take the dishwasher door off its hinge, take it apart, remove the dispenser, and either thoroughly scrub it out, or replace it altogether (the dispenser, not the dishwasher). Sigh.
Well, being at least three rinses along, (and it being about 10:30 on a Saturday Night) we decided to try helping it out and added to the rinse water a squirt of de-foaming additive (also found under the sink) left over from a previous Rug-Doctor rental. Sure enough, after two more rinses with this concoction, the water extracted from the dispenser was no longer sudsy and foamy. Now two rinses with plain water (so much for the early bedtime I'd hoped for), and it seemed pretty clean.
I closed up the dishwasher, and held my hand over the button ready to start a test rinse. With raised eyebrow, I looked at my husband. He looked at me. We took a deep sigh, and we realized we just didn't want to risk the mess.
"I'll take it apart on Monday morning," he said.
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