We don't use the dishwasher that came with our house because it uses 9-16 gallons of water per wash and runs for hours! I can wash dishes by hand in 2-3 gallons of water.
We're giving the dishwasher to a neighbor whose dishwasher had broken. But we use ours as a dish drainer and we don't want to clutter our very limited counter space with drainers. So we've decided to build a dishrack above the sink where we can store AND dry the dishes at the same time. This type of arrangement is very popular in Scandinavian countries where they make cabinets for this purpose.
This will eliminate the need for towel drying, dish drainers cluttering the sink, and we realized we can store more dishes in a row on their sides in a rack than stacked on top of each other. Also with the dishwasher gone, we will have more storage space that we can adapt to our needs.
Just today I saw a countertop dishwasher at Home Depot. It was only $169 & I'm sure it wouldn't use much water at all. Sounds like this would be ideal for you.
I can't find the link where I saw a picture of it, but it's just a regular-looking kitchen cabinet with a door, but the shelves are racks. I suspect anyone could build one - a box with racks that fit your dishes from one of those storage solution stores - and add a door that matches your kitchen. That's all we were doing.
The dishes stand upright on the bottom rack and glasses are laid upside-down on the top rack. I don't have space for pots so those get dried and put away right away, but I'm not much of a cook so we don't have lots of pots and pans to clean up anyway.
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