De afzuigkap is eenvoudig schoon te maken, maar de vaatwasser is vandaag niet te gebruiken.

Dutch forms compound nouns very freely, much more often than English.

• afzuigkap = afzuig
  • kap
    • roughly: extractor hood / cooker hood / range hood
• vaatwasser = vaat
  • wasser
    • literally something like dish washer, so dishwasher

In Dutch, these compounds are normally written as one word, not two.

Dutch nouns take either de or het as their definite article.

Both afzuigkap and vaatwasser are de-words, so you say:

• de afzuigkap
• de vaatwasser

Unfortunately, this is something you usually have to learn with each noun. There are patterns, but for everyday vocabulary it is best to memorize the noun together with its article.

It literally often means simple, but in this sentence it is best understood as easy:

• eenvoudig schoon te maken = easy to clean

Dutch eenvoudig can overlap with English simple and easy, depending on context. Here it describes how much effort cleaning takes, so easy is the most natural translation.

This is a very common Dutch pattern:

• zijn + adjective/adverb + te + infinitive

So:

• is eenvoudig schoon te maken

literally means something like:

• is easy to make clean
• more naturally: is easy to clean

This structure is often used where English uses to + verb after an adjective:

• Het boek is moeilijk te lezen = The book is difficult to read
• De deur is makkelijk te openen = The door is easy to open

Yes. The base verb is schoonmaken, which means to clean.

Because schoonmaken is a separable verb, te goes between the two parts:

• infinitive: schoonmaken
• with te: schoon te maken

That is completely normal for separable verbs in Dutch:

• opbellen → op te bellen
• aandoen → aan te doen
• schoonmaken → schoon te maken

This is the same te + infinitive structure as in the first clause.

• is niet te gebruiken = cannot be used / is not usable

It does not necessarily mean no one in the world can ever use it. In context, it usually means:

• it is unavailable
• it is out of order
• it should not be used
• it is unusable at the moment

So in this sentence, de vaatwasser is vandaag niet te gebruiken most naturally means that the dishwasher cannot be used today.

Because niet negates the predicate phrase te gebruiken.

So:

• is vandaag niet te gebruiken

means:

• is not usable today
• cannot be used today

In Dutch, niet often comes before the part it negates. Here it negates the whole te gebruiken idea.

Dutch main clauses typically place the finite verb in second position, and adverbs like vandaag often come after that verb.

So the structure is:

• de vaatwasser = subject
• is = finite verb
• vandaag = time adverb
• niet te gebruiken = rest of the predicate

That gives:

• De vaatwasser is vandaag niet te gebruiken.

This is very natural Dutch word order.

Yes. gemakkelijk would also work well.

• De afzuigkap is gemakkelijk schoon te maken.

Both eenvoudig and gemakkelijk can mean easy here.
A small nuance:

• eenvoudig can sound a bit more like simple / straightforward
• gemakkelijk more directly means easy

In this sentence, both are natural.

Because maar joins two main clauses:

• De afzuigkap is eenvoudig schoon te maken
• de vaatwasser is vandaag niet te gebruiken

This is similar to English:

• The extractor hood is easy to clean, but the dishwasher cannot be used today.

The comma helps mark the contrast between the two clauses.

Sometimes in practice, yes, but not exactly.

• kapot = broken
• niet te gebruiken = not usable / cannot be used

If a dishwasher is broken, then it is niet te gebruiken.
But something can also be niet te gebruiken for other reasons:

• it is being cleaned
• it is disconnected
• it is reserved
• it is temporarily unavailable

So niet te gebruiken is broader than kapot.

Historically and grammatically, it is part of the separable verb schoonmaken.

• schoon by itself means clean
• schoonmaken means to clean

In the phrase schoon te maken, schoon is not just an ordinary separate adjective in the English sense; it belongs to the verb construction. That is why learners should think of schoonmaken as one vocabulary item, even though it can split in some sentence patterns.