Post #35996 by Futura Girl on Mon, May 26, 2003 4:40 PM

i have always been cautious about putting anything remotely collectible into the dishwasher... it's not the hot water, but the detergents that are so caustic as to do damage. The typical dishwasher detergent will eat the silk screening off of glasses, wear off the gold rims off of expensive china and put a dull haze on colorful pyrex - actually it's removing the gloss finish off of it.

Then I think it was my mother-in-law that hipped me to putting a special load in after an event (where you are looking at a lot of dirty china) with no soap.

So now I have done that on a rare occasion when there is an overwhelming amount of dirty good stuff to wash. Just give everything a quick rinse to remove anything noticeable dirty, then once through the washer with no soap for a short cycle for sterilization.

Of course for anything really old and valuable - just bite the bullet and hand wash...

[ Edited by: Futura Girl on 2003-05-26 16:41 ]