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Love/Hate relationship with Bosch 500 (SHP65CM5N) Dishwasher

November 5th, 2026.

We purchased a Bosch model 500 dishwasher in June 2025.  We found it difficult to load efficiently.  Aside from the plate  tines most of the rest of the tines are poorly located and angled too shallow for tight loading.  We tend to clean our dishware off pretty well before running a load.  We don’t run a load every day so some dishes may sit for a day or two before we run a wash cycle.  The Bosch manual discourages pre-washing since it wastes water.  Sorry, but I’m not going to put something in it that will cake on and then come out worse than when it went in.

After 18 months we have developed a reasonably efficient way of loading our Bosch 500.  The main issue is the middle rack.  We find it works best to just stack the bowls onto one another to make sure the under spray can reach them, regardless of where the tines are placed.  I just try to make sure the inside “dirty” part of the dishes can be “seen” by the sprayer under the rack.  The middle rack does fine for cups and glasses so we work around/ignore the tines for serving and food prep bowls.  One or two tall glasses can be placed at the very front left and right positions of the middle basket.  If you have more than two tall items you may need to click the left, right or both utensil racks up, allowing them to fit without interference.  Since Bosch and other manufacturers don’t include heated drying options with their more recent models it is important to angle any item to allow water drainage.  The lack of heated drying means it is possible to load plastic lids in the bottom rack with less risk of being deformed, but I have found a few “disposable” lids and containers that came out bent after a cycle.  Based on this I use the middle rack for lids and try to angle them for best drainage.  I didn’t quite get it for the blue lid in the photo.  A dish towel takes care of anything that collects water.  I also learned to unload the bottom rack first, followed by the middle.  This prevents water caught in an upper basket item from dripping onto dry dishes below.  Just FYI, the black item in the lower rack is the basket for our air fryer.  Also, it seems to work better if we load square plates with the corner facing down. This seems to allow pots and pans to fit better alongside the plates. Your mileage may vary…

I didn’t think much of the top “utensil” rack at first but I found it does a great job with small bowls, spoon rests, measuring cups, whisks and just about any container shorter than about 3″ (7.5cm) in the center row.  The top rack was actually the saving grace that kept us from wanting to send the Bosch back.  The outer rows can handle items up to about 2.5″ (6cm); a little less if you flip them up.  I dislike using it for utensils other than steak knives.  I prefer to use the stock Bosch silverware basket instead of the utensil rack for silverware since I can carry the entire basket close to our silverware drawer for quicker unloading.  (I leave sharp knives out of the basket as a safety precaution)  The holes of the stock basket are spaced too tightly to allow easy loading/unloading/cleaning.  We avoid filling it full.  Plus, some of the holes are too small and make loading/unloading difficult.  I kept one of the baskets from our old Kenmore Elite and use that along with the Bosch basket.  See middle photo below.

More random stuff:

My sister, Sue Rego has a blog website, unburied.wordpress.com where she tracks and writes about our ancestors and other genealogical data.

My other websites

For personalized birthdays: TheySayItsYourBirthday.com

A tribute to Mankato’s People’s Fair.  After the show went dark I picked up their website and put as much content as I could find the site and the many times we attended.

My son, Dan and I ran a Bulletin Board System (BBS) back in the 1990s.  BBSs were precursors to the Internet for those of us geeky enough to see the future a little earlier.  Our BBS was called The Magnetic Domain.  We used Mustang Software’s Wildcat! BBS system.  I would love to put the games and message boards from MagDom back online, but I am now using it as a launching page for my magnetics design consulting business.   For now, it looks a little like it did back then.   Until I can find a better home you can also see a little item I call “Tone-Loc” to help guitarists with their control of tone as the volume knob is adjusted.  The Tone-Loc page looks much more like the Magnetic Domain BBS than the main magdom page.  We used one of the default menu settings that put a spectrum of color bars as background for the main menu.

My take on CampersParadise before they had an official website, www.campersparadise-mn.com. The campground is located on an island near Nevis, MN where we have vacationed for many years.  I created my page because there was a time when they didn’t have their own page.  We saw a Toga Party in 2008, sort of a flash mob.  In 2010 the group provided us with cosplay by way of “Politically Incorrect Cowboys and Indians“.  I don’t know the back story on this group except they used to hang out at the same set of campsites each year, near the eagle’s nest, and put on a walk-around show dressed up pre-defined garb for about an hour each year.  Come to think of it, we haven’t seen them for a few years (as of Summer 2021).  Camper’s Paradise is NOT a raucous place, really, but IS a great place for kids of any age to enjoy semi-wilderness surrounded by a lake.  This site’s title photo was taken on the causeway to the island.  In 2003 some local real estate developers attempted to tax the owners out of and off the island under the ‘fair use’ doctrine.  The court took a different view, and it was deemed to be a campground and only and ever a campground.  Read the legal brief here.

The Monarch Butterflies came through a few years ago.  It turns out that our house and yard are in their annual migration path.  The year of 2007 was particularly spectacular for us.  I have one photo and several video clips from various years.  This one from 2012 turned out well. I also have videos from 2007, 2010, 2011#1, 2011#2 for those devoted to this.  There were many more Monarchs than those shown in the small-screen images.  My photographic skills don’t do them justice.  The Monarch population has dropped significantly in recent years.  Various theories exist including loss of habitat, very cold winters at their roosting grounds in Mexico (the main destination of their multi-year migration) and the decrease in milkweed, one of their main sources of food, due to agricultural herbicides and roadside management.

The  “Minnesota Project” started June 2007 at Staples, MN.
The project was spawned perhaps 20 years ago when my parents, Grace and Ken, started collecting rocks from Minnesota counties that they traveled through.  The project consisting of a concrete map of Minnesota with the counties outlined by placing galvanized nails head-by-head at the county lines.  My brother-in-law, Bob, made the plans and printed the map so we could place the nails in the right places.  My dad built the frame earlier in the week and on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 we poured the cement, and in an hour of concentrated effort by us kids, grandkids and extended families, placed each nail to form the county lines.  My mom placed the first nail, indicated by the red ribbon, at the southwest corner of the state. The next phase will include the formation of rivers and the epoxying of rocks collected from each county, to be place in their respective county locations on the map.

June 3rd, 2007	June 18th, 2007 – 30 rocks in place

One of my favorite comic strips by Peter Kuper.  And here’s another favorite of mine by Gary Larson, relevant to people who play music in public, known colloquially as “The one about the Suck Button“.