A few years ago, I posted about washing dishes by hand. You may read it here. It was really fine, and even better, it was fun for quite a long time.
Then, in the past few months, I kind of found myself not baking as much, and even making less complicated suppers so there wouldn't be so many dishes to wash. I also got weary of almost always having dishes on the counters; either waiting to be washed or sitting on towels, drying. I made a couple noises about wanting a dishwasher but then decided that it was fine hand washing. Was there a tipping point? Yes. The dishes weren't as clean as I liked them, even though I spent a long time washing them. I also got annoyed at having to soak everything for ages so it wouldn't be so difficult to wash them.
We got one at Lowe's, and it was delivered by two moving men - one of whom carried it in on his shoulder!
I am very, very happy with it. One of my gripes when I used one before was that it ran for so long. I now just use the one hour setting, and it works every single time. Sometimes it is very full, and others not so much, but I don't feel badly because it is just an hour. I'm delighted! I'm already doing what I wrote above that I had cut down on - baking and more complicated suppers.