I just resort to hand drying those few items... If I crack the hot DW door open to let the steam out, then come back to everything when it is cool, there is very little that needs drying.

Right now many of my plastics come out wet and I leave them on the counter overnight to dry, but in the new kitchen I am getting a Miele Diamond that has an automatic door open and fan function after the cycle is complete. I have heard that plastics get completely dry this way. I am hoping this is the case because that is the primary reason I chose that DW. Even once you are past sippy cup and bottle stage, there are the lunch containers, the water bottle, and plastic drinking cups (I have yet to trust mine with glass). Oh, on the Miele and some Bosch models, there is a third rack designed for silverware, but most small parts from kids drinking cups stays up there nicely, too.

Are you planning a single bowl sink or divided? I anticipate having a dish rack that might occasionally find its way to the single sink for things like that. Then it will be somewhat out of sight.

I've got 4 soon to be 5 kids so we have lots of plastics around here. I can't imagine not having the heated dry function on my dw. I run it twice a day a lot of times so I would find it annoying if I had to wait for everything to dry. That being said some of the plastic stuff does still need to air dry a bit and I just stack it on the counter for a while. Is it an elegant solution? No, but my life with young kids isn't very elegant right now so I'm not too concerned. I do have a cabinet to put water bottles in to dry with their lids off though and in my new kitchen there is a deep drawer dedicated to tupperware type stuff and another for water bottles.

As far as the heated dry function warping plastics, ours doesn't seem to hurt the plastic stuff if I put it on the top shelf. The ziploc throwaway type food containers I do wash by hand though because they do warp in the wash but that's the only thing I wash by hand.

With my new bosch dw I have started using rinse aid. Now almost all the plastic is completely dry. The cycle I use takes 2 hrs 41 min. While that is long its great for everything to be dry. I also sometimes run 2 loads a day.

Heated dry dishwasher for me. I have one full sized with heated dry and one drawer dishwasher without it. I only run the drawer one occasionally, because I can't stand that it doesn't get the plastics totally dry. If it had it to do all over again heated dry would be a must-have. Oh well, live and learn.

"Is it an elegant solution? No, but my life with young kids isn't very elegant right now so I'm not too concerned." How true!

I think we had planned on having a double bowl sink, so drying there is definitely an option--but I always manage to splash water on the drying items.

It sounds like the heat drying dishwasher is the way to go. Glad to hear that, the dishwasher we had planned does not have this feature. I'll have to see about upgrading to one that does.

Debrak, rinse aid helps the dishes dry? I hadn't heard that.

Thanks everyone!

I always have kenmore DWs with regular heated dry. Plastics were always a problem.

My new DW is a bosch with "condensation"? drying. I follow their suggestions for using the sanitize option which does a final rinse with very hot water. This apparently helps with drying. Also using rinse aid which I never used before (at least not regularly) helps water bead up and run off items. It like washing your car with softened water. It drys fast.

So with following those tips, I open the door when the cycle is done and within 5 min. I unload dry dishes. The results are so much better then the kemores I had. You can adjust the amount of rinse aid needed.

I use finish turbo dry rinse aid.