I put a toaster in the dishwasher (2012)

Most capacitors are drained heavily just by being unplugged for a short period of time, as the other poster mentioned.

The other thing is that the capacitor would need to somehow be shorted to a component it wasn’t supposed to… instead of just itself. Shorting to itself is relatively safe (although might result in a pop and some arcing).

For something like a toaster (especially the old school ones with just a dial to control toast degree) they’re all mechanical contrivances. No electronics to speak of.

A few years ago, an 8 port Cisco 2960 that was under my management went offline. This switch was in a plastic NEMA box mounted on the outside of a ski lift. When I went to imvestigate, I found that a small glacier had formed over the NEMA box, and had ripped the door off the box. When I got there, the box was full of ice, which was in the process of melting. The switch was still running, but the ice had ripped the trunk patch cable out - apparently the root cause of the switch going down. I unplugged it and extracted it from the ice, and dumped a not-insignificant quantity of water out from inside the switch. I let it dry out for a couple days, got a new cover for the NEMA box (which I screwed shut this time in addition to the little flip latch) and it's been running fine ever since. Who'da thunk?

It's always interesting to me to see what you can get away with washing/getting wet without ruining it. I bought a bunch of vinyl 45's off of eBay several years ago and they were pretty gross. I stumbled across a forum where someone recommended washing them with water and a little bit of dish soap. As you can probably imagine, a lot of people freaked out in the responses and said it was a terrible idea. I gave it a whirl because the records were cheap and they sounded perfect after they dried. There was no warping or damage, although a few of the labels got a little messed up (but the needle doesn't go there anyways, so I didn't mind). I guess you're supposed to use distilled water, but Chicago water worked just fine.

I often run my (PCB) boards through the dishwasher after soldering components to them. To clean off any flux that might be on them.

I have a similar but less extreme experience.

I have a Tommee Tippee prep machine for baby formula milk. The part it has water coming out got so dirty after months of use. Due to lack of sleep like any father of newborn does, I flip it upside down and clean it with running water, and then I found out all the water finds its way into the machine.

Then I completely disassemble it, I use a dehumidifier to blow dry air directly to the screen that water made its way between the glasses.

Then after it is completely dried, I put it back, it continued to work.

So happens I’m a physicist too.

Now I should find an electronics to throw into the dish washer. Unfortunately I already get rid of my toaster because it got so dirty, I should have kept it.