I am moving into a house with a Very Small Dishwasher...

[worthy]

...no, not my kiddo.  ;-)  My old dishwasher is a typical family-size.  My new one is about half that size.  I am curious to know if this a) helps or hinders the clutter, or b) is better/worse for the electricity bill.  Anyone have insight on the differences?

It does seem that the counters would stay clear if I could run a load after every meal.  But I worry that it will cost a lot of electricity to do that.

With our old dishwasher, we didn't want to load it until we had a full load, lest someone think the dirty dishes were clean.  So the dishes piled up on the counters until we could do a load, maybe once a day, or sometimes it would go longer.  I won't miss that.

Do you have a tiny dishwasher?  What are your opinions - positive/negative?

[Cynthia Mosher]

I think it would depend on the dishwasher. Some can be much more efficient than others. 

[Peggy O'Mara]

Seems like it would work out about the same electricity wise, assuming the water usage in your new, smaller dishwasher is also half of the bigger one. So, doing one load a day would probably be fine. Can you check with the manufacturer, see if they have an FAQ online?

[Ruthiegirl]

A friend has one of those and I love it.  She can pack it really full and run it once a day.  Works really well and is big enough for her family of 3 plus the house guests she always has around.

I don't have a dishwasher now, but if I got one I would consider a smaller one.  I never seem to have enough dishes to run one full, but they get pretty funky sitting for 2 days between runs.  I think I would rather do a smaller load every night and have fresh dishes each morning.  

Electricity wise -- I have no idea.  Energy star ratings, maybe?  

[4evermom]

Our family of three only needs to run a full sized dishwasher every other day... I think a half sized one might be easier because if you got in a routine of say, running it at night and putting the clean dishes away first thing in the morning, everyone would know the dishes in the dishwasher during the day were dirty ones and they could add their used dishes to it. Also, when running it every other day, unrinsed things get crustier and don't get clean as easily. (We generally don't need to rinse things for them to get clean).

Growing up, we had a clean/dirty sign on the dishwasher that we'd flip to the appropriate label to indicate the status of the dishes.