I do believe there is a market (in the games-for-not-money realm) for a dishwasher loading game.

The physics can be hugely simplified, since no one expects to see how the dishes are washed and so long as the results are even remotely like an actual dishwasher (100% clean if you do it right, smudge of dog food on the under side of this if not) no one will question them. Would you be able to determine whether some collection of dishes had been washed by a real, physical dishwasher in our universe -vs- a virtual dishwasher, if given a JPEG of the before and after dishes?

NO!

So what happens after you close the dishwasher doesn't even need to care about rendering or "realism" at all. Wish-wash, bing, open the door to inspect results.

When it comes to quirks like stacking a bowl with its underside-void touching a plate squarely and trying to simulate how much the shielded void gets washed or not ...that's a bit harder. But still subject to gross simplification.

And all the virtual dishes can be very uniform and, in computer land at least, exactly identical down to the vertices and voxels. No one will ever say "these two brand new plates look literally identical" because to us dumb humans, they do in real life also. The surfaces can be made of carefully curated curves and stuff to make things like wash simulation and rendering somewhat easily: If you know a certain bowl is a paraboloid given by function f(x,y,z) then you can maybe do some tricks to simplify or, if not "improve" the rendering and lots of other stuff. Plus, subject to extreme compression!

So you can make lots of really cheap, easy very realistic looking bowls, plates, glasses (ooo, transparent), forks, knives... loads of stuff. You have a similarly generative dishwasher in which to place them, with simple, regular generative racks to hold them. Just disallowing ridged boddies form passing through one another is all that it takes to acurately simulate loading the dishwasher. You can have a virtual right arm grab and move and release just by following your mouse commands, like a marionette, and have that also look unnervingly realistic... I would imagine. Meanwhile the interface is just click, drag, scroll, drag, hover... Super, supper simple.

AND, scoring would be easy and uncontroversial input residual_gross_stuff into a function and out pops a score.

And strategy is easily rewarded.

And scoring could be adjusted for sterility. For example, you can put the silverware handle-up or handle down (poky bits up) in the silverware holder thing. If you put them in poky-side-down, the poky sides can end up bunched together or maybe shielded by a plate underneath the silverware holder thing ...several factors can result in the poky bits being less clean if they are inserted handle-end-up. However if you put your silverware handle-end-down and poky-bits-up, you have to remove them from the dishwasher by the poky bit. You have to touch your fork's tines in order to remove them. Did you wash your fucking hands?

And having different kinds of dishwashers and configurations is easy.

And one can consider drying the dishes. There are often annoying puddles on the cupped surfaces if they are face up (which, hey, they might be for strategic reasons). If you are smart and open the dishwasher when it's done to let it blow off some steam, and evaporating away some of this (unless you want to simulate dumping it out...ugh), then you can also score on how much probably-clean water is left amongst your dishes when it's done. Or when it's done drying; maybe be docked an amount of score because it is understood that you need to spend extra time draining, drying etc. And you can choose whether or not to be scored in this way.

and finally...

Every pair of cohabitation people who are involved in washing the same dishes have had multiple strained conversations about the right way to do any and/or all of this. It's relatable.

Why not have it out in the thunderdome that is simulated dish washing?

oh shit...

You could have a multiplayer mode where you and your wife can do it together; maybe have a non-virtual argument.