Put a mixing bowl upside down on the top rack and it almost broke my machine

I saw a TikTok hack saying you can save space by putting big bowls upside down over cups on the top rack. Tried it last night with a big metal mixing bowl and the water spray arm got stuck underneath it. The dishwasher made this horrible grinding noise for like 30 seconds before I ran over and shut it off. Had to unscrew the whole lower arm to get the bowl unstuck. Never again. Has anyone else had a hack backfire this bad?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamieperez14d agoMost Upvoted

Oh no, that grinding noise is the stuff of nightmares! I totally feel your pain, I tried a similar hack once with a huge plastic bowl and it flipped over and blocked the water from draining. The whole cycle just filled up with dirty water and I had to bail it out with a cup. It took forever to clean up and my dishwasher smelled funky for a week. These supposed time-saving hacks always end up causing way more work than they save. You're not alone in that disaster, I promise.

park.adam13d ago

Hold on a second here, I gotta play devil's advocate a bit. The hack totally works if you do it right, the problem was using a metal bowl in a dishwasher that's already a bad idea (metal can mess with the spray arms and heating element). Plastic bowls or big mixing bowls that are lightweight and don't block the arm? Perfectly fine, I've done it for years without a single issue. You just gotta make sure the bowl isn't so big or heavy that it drops down onto the spray arm, and definitely don't stack it on top of cups that are too tall. The real shame is that one bad experience made you swear it off, when it's a legit space saver for us folks with tiny dishwashers. People just need to pay attention to their specific machine's dimensions, that's all.