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I put the handles down, that way more will fit in the basket. Like a ladle and a potato masher would take up all the room! I never put my cutting knives in the dishwasher, they are washed and dried immediately.
Handles up for me, mostly because too often, if we do handles down, the handles fall through the bottom of the utensil basket, and then jam the bottom shelf/tray of the dishwasher when we try to pull it out to unload it. (Hard to describe but maybe others know what I am talking about.)
My dishwasher has the little slots that you stick the handles through to keep the flatware from nesting. Forks and spoons fit only with the handles down; knives handles up.
I replaced a crappy dishwasher at our old house with the most expensive Kitchenaid they had at Sears. The reason for this was because it had an extra rack at the top, like the Bosch unit pictured in an above post. When she saw it, my wife just HAD to have it. Our new house has all brand-new appliances in the kitchen, but she's already complaining about not having that extra rack for the silverware and cooking utensils.
Handles must always be down. Toilet paper falls over the front of the roll. Spit with the wind and never , ever give a cat a bath.
Common sense dontcha know?
Our dishwasher has the little cutout things so that the handles go down, which separates the utensils and gets them cleaner. I put the knives with handles up.
To me the only thing that matters is that the utensils are not stacked on top of each other. Every time my husband puts utensils in the dishwasher, I have to move them around, since there is no way water will get in between spoons/forks that are sandwiched together. If I forget to check, you can bet that I'll be redoing those utensils after I unload the dishwasher after the next cleaning.
I point forks down because pointy. Knives go down. Spoons go both ways. Goal is to not nest anything or have any one of the 8 compartments too crowded. This machine does have the covers where you could put all the handles down and thus keep them all separated, but it doesn't work with some handles and that's just too much of a pain. With them open we can put other things in there, like measuring spoons or whatnot.
While most dishwasher baskets are designed so that the handles are down, one can easily contaminate the utensils when grabbing them to put away after the wash cycle.
Ask the teenager with a runny nose from a bad cold to put the utensils away, and you will know what I mean
Whichever way works best. Spoons have to be up or they might nest and not get clean.
Everything else I put in by the handle so I won't get my hands sticky. Ours has flat racks for long utensils. Whatever works, is fast, and least messy.
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Knives go down. Spoons go both ways. Goal is to not nest anything or have any one of the 8 compartments too crowded. This machine does have the covers where you could put all the handles down and thus keep them all separated, but it doesn't work with some handles and that's just too much of a pain. With them open we can put other things in there, like measuring spoons or whatnot.
