How do YOU do your dishes?

[smittenbyu]

So, water wastage is my big pet peeve. Recently, I ran into this article about not prewashing dishes before dishwashing. I usually build up dishes in the sink. They kind of get soaked in the water I use to wash hands, vegetables, etc. And then I scrub off with a little cold water (no soap and sometimes running water on low) before loading. I just can't seem to get myself to just stick plates with food on them in the dishwasher. I don't know some of the interviews claim they get peanut butter off. But ours doesn't get sunflower seed butter off. And somewhere else, I read their challenge is dried up rice. Well, we have some component of rice in all our meals. The other thing we can't get off are the milk-tea stains on the steel dish we use.

Plus am wondering if they use predominantly ceramics, glass, & plastics? Most of our dishes are steel & glass. I don't know. Our dishwasher is newly purchased in 2011 by the management. Can't find the user manual. But I am working on it. I wish they were more specific about what they mean as "modern" dishwashers.

ETA: I am not questioning the use of dishwasher. I am questioning the use of the pre-washing/rinsing method. I find it so amusing at how difficult this one change has been for me. I just can't get myself to just put plates/dishes in without rinsing! :P 

Comments

[voyageofdreams.livejournal.com]

M *hates* how I stack the dishwasher. --- the way I do it: just chuck it all in! No pre-rince. No plan. I will put one plate in each slot. I never skip slots. I like to load that baby up!!! --- He, on the other hand will leap from his dinner seat in the middle of a meal and come micro manage my stacking. This usually leads to him unpacking what I've done, and then *always* re-stacking. My care factor on how a dishwasher is stacked is zero, so I usually just leave and relax in the longe (win, win for me!!!). How M stacks: first of all he does not like dishes stacked in the sink. Ever. He will pull them out and set them on the side. (I always stack in my sink, and never in an orderly way). When it's loading time he may rince a little, but not normally. Mostly he loads the dishwasher like a true engineer would - Leaving spaces/slots between pieces so every piece gets the most efficient wash possible.

My husband is an engineer in every way possiable. I tend to fully exploit this, when I can, with several domestic chours. Muahahaha. .... I think he know this though. :/ lol

[twicet.livejournal.com]

I always rinse off first, my daughter just puts them in, I just find I don't get them clean if I don't rinse first, but we don't run the machine every day.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

We run water over them under the faucet to rinse off the main food mess, then put them in the dishwasher. We run it every two or three days. We never have trouble with it not getting the dishes clean unless they were stacked badly, where something blocks another dish.

Our dishwasher is two or three years old.

Back in the seventies, my mom would clean the dishes before loading. That is, she'd run the dishes under the faucet, and wipe them clear with a rag.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/garden/21fix.html?_r=1&
“Dishwasher detergent aggressively goes after food,” Mr. Edwards said, “and if you don’t have food soil in the unit, it attacks the glasses, and they get cloudy,” a process known as etching that can cause permanent damage.

[echomyst.livejournal.com]

We... erm... hand wash our dishes. Dishwasher's used as drying rack, like in many Chinese-in-N.America households, it seems.

Growing up, my mom taught me to add a squirt of dishwashing soap to a sponge and sponge down all the dirty dishes. Then rinse with running water.

Jas taught me to fill up a sink with hot soapy water (with just enough hot water to cover a bowl in the sink), wash the dishes, then rinse using a sink of water.

This uses less water than rinsing with running water, but really... the method I use just depends on how dirty the dishes are.

If we use the dishwasher (once every couple of months), we scrape dirty stuff off before sticking them into the washer. There is never a bunch of food scraps left on our plates anyway. My parents' vigilance with zero food waste have ensured every grain of rice is eaten, every bit of sauce soaked up w/ rice or pasta or whatever.

No peanut butter is ever left on our plates either. Always scraped off with bread and eaten!

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

By hand, ALL BY HAND, and 6 months of this after ~3 years with a dishwasher means one of the things that is absolutely going into the kitchen in our new house is a dishwasher.

I'm also of the "pile things in the sink, the water that runs over them will help before we get to actually washing them", but it bugs the heck out of my husband, because he can't navigate the sink to actually wash the dishes when it's so full. (I do not pretend to understand why not.)

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

Our dishwasher runs almost every day, so the problem of dried up food doesn't arise. There are very few things it doesn't get off. Yes, sticky rice is one of them, so when I cook it, I soak the pot in a handful of water until it's time for the dishwasher to run. It still gets stuffed in with all the food attached. Just... soaked.

I have a dishwasher so don'T have to wash by hand. :)

I hear the same complaints from the green people over here. Yet, even though fresh water is a problem worldwide, it is not in Germany. We get tons of rain and our water (as in our part of the city) gets the water from a mountain spring that will run down the hill, if I use it or not. It's a luxury, but it does affect my way of doing this.

[sistrmoon.livejournal.com]

I've tried it because I read the same thing. The dishes didn't get clean and the dishwasher got clogged. Pre rinsing and dishwasher is still less water than washing completely by hand. We have a HE dishwasher that takes 3 hours per load!

[musicpsych.livejournal.com]

I usually rinse once, but nothing on top of that. I've seen some people scrub with a sponge (no soap), but I feel like that would ruin the sponge too quickly.