Ina Garten is making us rethink everything we thought we knew about loading a dishwasher.
The “Barefoot Contessa” star, 72, recently shared an Instagram photo of her home dishwasher full of clean dishes.
“If you’re not sick of unloading the dishwasher, could you please come unload mine??” she wrote in the caption.
Fans were quick to notice that Garten had violated several so-called rules of loading a dishwasher. She included expensive-looking knives, a large baking pan and a spatula with a wooden handle — and she also seemed to have run the washer half-empty.
“Ooooo. Knives in the dishwasher! Doesn’t damage them?” one fan commented on her photo.
“I do it many times a day and some of them are 40 years old!” Garten replied.
Another fan asked Garten about the wisdom of putting what looked like a steel and aluminum All-Clad roasting pan through a dishwasher cycle.
“EVERYTHING goes in the dishwasher!!” she responded. “My assistant used to put the bird cage in the dishwasher (she took the bird out first).”
She did clarify later in the comments that technically, not everything should go through the dishwasher; cast-iron pans should still be washed by hand.
But in general, her dishwashing philosophy seems to be to hand-wash as few items as possible, an approach many home cooks would no doubt support.
Some people on Instagram also marveled at all the empty space in Garten’s dishwasher load.
“Oh Ina, my husband would never have let me run that dishwasher — way too empty. I keep pointing out we’re out of silverware…” one person wrote in the comments.
But Garten, who must go through dozens of dirty dishes a day, doesn’t worry about such things.
“I’ve been known to run the dishwasher, then put more dishes in with the clean ones and just run it again,” she responded in the comments.
The celebrity chef clearly has her dishwasher-loading method down to a science. It’s unconventional, yes, but if it works for her, who are we to question it?
In fact, some people are taking her dishwasher photo as permission to include more controversial items in their own home loads.
"If Ina Garten puts her knives and spatulas in the dishwasher, then I can put my knives and spatulas in the dishwasher!” one fan wrote.