Are YOU loading your dishwasher right?

Are YOU loading your dishwasher right?

Let me put this delicately: Consumer Reports doubts it very much. The venerable magazine published an article on this site a few days ago that touched off an emotional debate in the comments section. It was headlined: "You're probably loading your dishwasher wrong." ("You do not know the price I paid when I told my wife how to load the dishwasher," one commenter said gloomily. "Some things are better left unsaid.")

Me? I am fully aware of proper dishwasher-loading technique. (I must have my degree somewhere.)

Of course, the vast majority of people think they know the best way to load a dishwasher -- though many are wrong -- and the rest are blissfully unaware.

This hodgepodge of dishwasher-loading education levels inevitably becomes an issue for everyone who has ever lived with another human being. So long as you actually have a dishwasher, proper dishwasher-loading technique will inevitably cause friction.

Consumer Reports instructs:

• Large items should be put on the sides and back so that they don't block the spray in the middle.

• Don't turn dishes away from that middle spray, and don't let them rest on top of each other.

• Put dirtier dishes on the bottom, facedown, so they get the full brunt of the spray.

• Place silverware handles down, except knives, to keep them from nesting.

• Fragile items should go on the top rack.

• Don't crowd.

To this I say, duh (though I take issue with handles down; it just seems unnecessary).

See, I was brought up in the school of proper dishwasher loading technique, where you learned not only that knives point down, for goodness' sake, but that larger dishes go on the outside, bowls sit together and no plate shall occupy the same space as another. If you failed to learn this, Mom would happily provide you with lots and lots and lots of further demonstration.

As much as I loathed the rigors of proper dishwasher-loading technique, I learned it well, utilized it often and eventually forgot that there was any other way to load a dishwasher.

Enter my husband, who didn't have a dishwasher growing up. When we moved in together and he started loading the dishwasher, it was chaos. It was like all those spikes and grooves meant nothing to him. Cups were everywhere, plates shoved together regardless of size differential, bowls occupying huge swaths of territory where glasses should be.

Chaos.

But we weren't alone. A recently engaged friend of mine looked at the Consumer Reports article and said, "Duh, but I take issue with handles down." Dishwasher-loading soul sister. But her man just didn't understand.

The dishwasher-loading issue has also recently come up at BuzzFeed (in a video about the weirdest things couples fight about) and in the Oatmeal, twice.

Posing the question to my Facebook friends brought out stories of the issue surfacing in marriage counseling and a mother-in-law nearly booting her son-in-law from the house for loading the dishwasher wrong (though she'd boot me too, since I would load handles up -- oh man, am I wrong on this issue?).

Apartment Therapy ran an article called "Dish Wars: What are Your Dishwasher Loading Rules," and there were plenty of passionate pleas for proper dishwasher loading technique and confessions of secret rearranging between husbands and wives:

• "I have to admit. When my husband is at work, I reload the dishwasher before I run it. He just throws things in with no rhyme or reason. The space is not being used optimally!"

• "My husband and I have a rule that whomever is loading the dishwasher gets to load it their way. BUT I often go back and rearrange when he is done because he doesn't put like things together and it wastes a lot of space."

• "My husband is the chillest person in the world -- except that he rearranges the dishwasher after I have loaded it -- pretty much every time."

I am glad my husband does the dishes, but I don't secretly rearrange. I loudly rearrange and tell my husband about it, because we have a marriage of honest and open communication.

Luckily, he's a good guy and just smiles at me and offers his same, staid retort for these naggy things I tell him, which are usually weird nitpicky things my mother passed on to me (all the shirts in the closet face left), and that is: "There are many ways to do something."

He offered that advice to my mom once.

"How do you know this is the right way, anyway?" he said. (I had never thought to ask.)

Her reply was simple: "I read the manual!"

There you have it. There may be nuances among dishwashers and their loaders, but she who reads the manual, makes the rules.

Related on Yahoo Homes:

• Wait -- is it actually a mistake to rake leaves?
• 7 surprising ways to use salt around the house
• How to cure a stinky house naturally

Here's a Good Housekeeping video on proper dishwasher loading: