To Rinse or Not To Rinse? That Is The Dishwasher Question

The very first time my husband and I made a meal together when we were dating and then cleaned the kitchen together we created a habit we still do to this day. We both carry the dishes to the kitchen, I put any leftovers in the fridge and take the dishes to him, he rinses them and I load the dishwasher. We have done that probably 99% of the time over the course of our marriage. (If he loads the dishwasher I typically reload it later…correctly.)

We were at his house at the time and over the course of meals made over those first weeks of courtship, I noticed he always rinsed the dishes off. I mean a really good scrubbing and rinsing job, to where they almost looked clean without the use of the dishwasher. Now I was never that meticulous, and with a teen-age son at the time, well, a lot of dishes at my own house never got rinsed before they were loaded. I just kind of thought I was a bit lazier in that area.

Fast-forward years later and I mentioned to my husband that someone had told me you shouldn’t rinse dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. He found that hard to believe and for some reason, I didn’t pursue it, which is rather unusual for me. But since he was doing the work of rinsing, maybe I just didn’t care enough to prove my point. (I have a tendency to try to prove I’m right sometimes, ok maybe a lot of times, but only when I know I’m right.)

Well, I recently found an article on goodhousekeeping.com that actually backs up that claim…you really don’t need to rinse the dishes before you load the dishwasher. According to the article, your dishwasher detergent (they used Cascade in the example, which has enzymes designed to attach themselves to food particles) works better with dirty dishes and you can actually save around 230 hours a year by not rinsing.

Not only can you save time but you can also save money by not using so much water. And still get clean dishes. Less work, money savings, and clean dishes?

So I’ll be sharing this article with the hubby…and with all the time we save, well we’ll have more time for meaningful conversation…ha!

I haven’t rinsed the dishes for a week now and most everything came out sparkly clean. There were a couple of days where the dishes sat for a long time in the dishwasher because we didn’t use many dishes and one pan that had hardened chocolate in it  didn’t come quite clean. So if you don’t run your dishwasher on a regular basis, your results might not be as good.

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/cleaning/a33322/stop-prerinsing-dishes/