"Adulthood", apparently, means being excited about a new dishwasher
I have an odd confession to make. I really enjoy doing the dishes. "Obsessive" is probably the wrong word, but I like having clean dishes and strongly dislike a full/dirty sink so it's the chore I tend to gravitate to. This probably stems from my time in graduate school, when I lived in an apartment without a dishwasher, and there was a direct relationship between the fullness of my sink and the state of my mental health (more dirty dishes == more likely to be depressed). When I came out of that haze I developed the habit of washing the dishes as soon as I used them. I kept this habit even when I moved to a place with a dishwasher.
Now that I am married to someone who enjoys cooking and prepares 90% of our foood, I do 90% of our dishes. And the meals she makes are more complex, so the dishwashing burden has increased dramatically since she moved in. All of which means that the dishwasher is an appliance I care particularly about.
A few weekends ago I was watching TV when I heard my wife exclaim in surprise from the kitchen. When I got there the room was full of smoke -- from our dishwasher!
Our dishwasher was a stainless steel Jenn-Air (which was present when I purchased the house, before we married). I'm told now that Jenn-Air is Whirlpool's luxury brand, and I suspect it was originally installed when the previous owner renovated the kitchen. We did need to have it serviced once within the past year, but it served us well despite its age.
We're not sure exactly what went wrong. Best we can figure, the lower spray arm somehow became caught on the exposed heating element at the bottom of the tub. It failed to spray, and when the drying cycle started the dishwasher overheated. The arm melted, as did all the plastic items inside. We're not the first to experience overheating problems with this brand of dishwasher, apparently.
A repair would require, at minimum, replacing the sprayer arm, heating element, and probably the control board. We decided it was probably time to replace the entire unit.
I should point out at this point that neither my wife nor I have particularly expensive tastes, but both of us subscribe to the buy-once-cry-once philosophy when it comes to major purchases. I was an engineering student in a previous life, and therefore I spent far too much time over a few days learning how a dishwasher works, what separates a good dishwasher from a bad one, and what features are worth paying for. I even found a YouTube video about how to optimize dishwasher performance.
And after perusing the r/BuyItForLife subreddit (as one does), we narrowed our choices to two brands: Bosch and Miele. Both are high-end European brands renowned for their effectiveness and reliability. After seeing both brands in local stores, we settled on a Miele. Folks online rave about the brand and there are reports of these dishwashers lasting 20 years or more. Sounds great!
The Miele G5008 is the brand's most basic model. It doesn't open automatically at the end of a cycle, it doesn't include a built-in water softener, and it doesn't have the proprietary AutoDos detergent dispenser. It uses buttons, not a touchpad. There are no wireless or smart features.
That said, it is high-quality where it counts. The interior is stainless steel. The racks are high capacity, and solidly built - they felt better than the racks in the Bosch 800 series we also considered. (One caveat: the Bosch 800 technically sits in the middle of the Bosch lineup, whereas the G5008 is Miele's entry level model).
It's a really remarkable piece of engineering. Our hope is that it will give us the benefits of Miele design without the additional features (which could be points of failure).
It feels odd to be so excited about a new appliance. Perhaps this is a consequence of my current life stage (married homeowner without kids, and the one in our household who is responsible for most of the dishwashing). After two loads I've been quite impressed - our stainless steel pots are cleaner than they have ever been. So far I'm happy with the purchase. I'm really interested to see if it lives up to the online hype.