Could this hot new kitchen trend help save your relationship?

No, says Esther Walker (who’s married to foodie Giles Coren). Having two dishwashers (it’s a thing) will only make things worse. Trust me...

Pet hates: whose turn is it to unload the other dishwasher? (Getty Images)

We once rented a house in the countryside that had two dishwashers. We couldn’t believe it. “Look,” said my husband. “Two dishwashers!” “What? Wow!” I said. We stood about, staring.

I’m from London, where if you’ve got space for even one dishwasher, you walk about feeling smug. But two? Why not put a pool in the garden? Or get a pet leopard, or paint the place gold?

But it turns out that this is a miserly attitude and everyone is at this double-dishwasher thing.

Last week, the Times reported that kitchen designers are being asked to squeeze in two dishwashers – one either side of the sink if the preferred arrangement – or even three. Estate agents are noticing more queries about whether there is room in a kitchen for another Miele or a Bosch.

I called friends and asked whoever answered about their dishwashers. Two already had the double and were evangelical, the other only had one and was furious about it.

I can see that if you have extreme numbers of children, you need to mechanise. Similarly, if you entertain a lot, you need extra capacity to cope with all the gravy boats, tureens and buffet platters.

To want many children or to entertain extensively is anathema to me. I have two children and entertain twice a year and that’s as much as I can cope with. Still, am I a mug for doing any washing up at all?

I can’t help feeling that no matter how many children you have, or how often you have 14 for supper on a Wednesday, getting in an extra machine is an unconscious attempt to outsource the un-outsourceable. Sure, you’ve got another dishwasher, but you’re only delaying whatever it is about that sort of work that you hate, whether it’s the Tetris-ing of the dirty plates or the dread tedium of the unloading. You are trying to escape the unescapable: your kitchen needs to be cleaned and, bad news, you’re in charge.

Truly, I love my dishwasher. I treat it to regular deep-cleans with that special fluid and lovingly scrub the filter every now and again. In bleaker moments, I believe it is the only thing in my house that really cares about me.

But is has its limits. It does not self-load or self-unload. Occasionally, the rinse-cycle is a bit off and the glasses and mugs are spattered with weeny bits of scum, now fused to surfaces by boiling temperatures. All sorts of things can’t go in and need to be hand-washed anyway. My mother had four children and a constant stream of lodgers and au pairs. For 20 years she had no dishwasher, because she said it was more trouble than it is worth.

And however many dishwashers I had, it wouldn’t change the fact that domestic work, particularly in the kitchen, needs to be done and never ends.

I am passionately in love with an LA-based psychiatrist called Dr Phil Stutz. He worked in Rikers Island prison for years and has many aphorisms that I cling to, the best being: “Life is full of pain, uncertainty and constant work.” How you deal with those three things, he says, will determine how happy you are.

Making peace with the constant work generated by a home – children or no children – and truly understanding that you are now the adult in the room and no one is coming to help, takes years. But once you are in that place, the idea of having another dishwasher to tend to feels, frankly, like a hassle.

We never used that extra dishwasher in the rental, by the way. It just sat there for the week.