Just wait until you see what your top shelf can do.
TikTok’s unofficial grandma Babs Costello (@BrunchWithBabs) has done it again. The 73-year-old is known for giving out grandmotherly advice on everything from meal prep to how to clean out your car, but her new video might be her best one yet. Costello recently went viral for showing her followers how to load a dishwasher correctly — and her tips will make you completely reevaluate how you’ve been doing the common household chore.
On the surface, loading the dishwasher is one of the easier chores. In fact, it’s likely one you’ve already taught your kids how to do. But it turns out there’s an art to correctly placing your plates and utensils into the washer for maximum cleanliness and convenience.
According to Costello, it’s best to be strategic when loading the dishwasher. The top shelf is for the most fragile items: small bowls, mugs, and wine glasses. You can also nestle bigger utensils like spatulas in between the fragile items. Meanwhile, the bottom shelf should be reserved for plates, pots, and pans (Costello prefers not to put her pots and pans in the dishwasher, but she won’t judge you too much if you do).
The most shocking tip of all involves a function that many dishwasher owners didn’t seem to know their machines even had. “For tall wine glasses, don’t forget to drop your top shelf down before closing,” she explains as she pushes down on the side bar, lowering the shelf. If the video’s comments section is any indication, plenty of people out there had no idea they could lower their top shelf, but it turns out it’s a fairly standard feature.
Costello’s advice doesn’t end with her top-shelf hack, though. Read on for the best tips from her viral dishwasher loading video.
This may sound like a trick, but according to Costello, there’s no need to rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Instead, she advises scraping them out, which gives the soap something to cling to. It turns out her advice is 100 percent on the mark.
As reported by The Guardian, pre-rinsed plates could give your dishwasher the wrong idea about how hard it needs to be working. “If you pre-rinse everything, your dishwasher’s going to think that your plates are cleaner than they actually are, so it won’t wash as intensely and they might actually come out dirtier,” Ashley Iredale, white goods expert at the consumer advocacy group Choice told the outlet.
So those prongs in the dishwasher that appear to be perfect for setting your mugs on top of are not meant for high-stakes balancing acts that could result in your favorite mug biting the dust in a dishwasher-related incident. Instead, you’re supposed to nestle mugs in between the prongs where they’ll be safe during their wash.
Loading dishes so that they face outwards may seem more practical, but Costello advises facing them toward the center of the washer. The reason makes so much sense: it makes it easier for the spray arm to reach your dishes and ensure they come out clean every time. She also adds the spray arm should never be obstructed, so be careful not to overload.
Even if you knew some of Costello’s tips already, her video is a good one to share with your kids — especially if loading the dishwasher is their chore. In her caption, the TikToker, who has dubbed herself “everyone’s grandmother,” notes that “everyone has their own system” when it comes to loading the dishwasher. However, her tips and tricks are given with love, and they might just leave you with fewer dishes in need of a rewash.