Do you wash your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher? (loading, sink)

[twoincomes]

When you do dishes, do you wash or rinse (please specify which if you do) your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher? If you do, how detailed are you?

If you wash your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, what does the dishwasher do that you didn't?

I don't wash my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I do scrape the bulky food off the plate into the garbage first.

[talloolla]

I don't wash them, but I do rinse off any particles left on the plate. I try to do this as soon as we are done with the dishes and cooking tools. That way they can sit in the sink and be loaded whenever it is convenient. Any dishes with cheese residue get washed by hand - they never come clean for me in the machine.

[MrWillys]

I always scrub my dishes clean prior to the wife loading the dishwasher. There's no little hands in there that will do it for you. The dishwasher in my opinion is for sterilization. I also rinse things prior to them drying making it 10X harder to get off.

[blazerj]

Rinse food off, but don't scrub or anything, unless something is caked on. However, I try and load the dishwasher immediately to keep the sink empty.

[T. Damon]

Scrape food off, little if any rinsing, pop them in the dishwasher just as the manufacturer recommends (Bosch, but almost any D/W these days will do) and 98% of the time they come out perfectly clean. Of course some pots and pans or other items might take a little scrub, soak or hand wash but very few. I clean the filters frequently and maintain the dishwasher gaskets. The couple of forks or knives and a plate that sometimes might have a speck of food on them is no reason to completely disregard all expert advice and wash the dishes twice every time and waste a bunch of water and effort.

I realize I am completely in the minority with this behavior and you can never convince most folks to break the habit of washing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher but it's a stupid habit in my opinion.

[jrsydevil82]

Rinse

[newcomputer]

lol this is the second post by the OP on this topic.

I agree that your MIL's dishwasher isn't working up to par.

I have a small dishwasher and just enough dishes to do a load. I always run it on the longest cycle but do not use the drying feature.

I scrape but do not rinse. If I suspect something may not get clean ( melted cheese), I open the dishwasher before the wash cycle ends and hit the offending item with a plastic scrubby. This is a rare occasion.

I love my dishwasher. I said "scrape" but I don't have to do much scraping. I'm a good cook.

[Hopes]

I rinse with water. The dishwasher washes and sanitizes.

If the dishwasher is only ran once after being filled throughout the day, I think it's gross to leave the food on the dishes until running the dishwasher.

[psurangers11]

If something is burnt on the dish or really stuck on there i'll give it a scrape and rinse with hot water. I was taught when young to at least give a rinse as soon as your done eating. Nothing is worse when people just throw a dish in the sink that has tons of sauce or something on it and lets it sit... then it becomes hard and sticks to the plate. A simple rinse after use requires you and your dishwasher to do less work to clean the dishes!

[HWTechGuy]

Even though it's barely a year old, the dishwasher we inherited here at our "new" house is not as good as the one we left behind at the old place. So, we have the following system in place:

silverware/utensils: rinse only
glasses/cups : rinse only
plates'bowls : rinse and sometimes a quick swish with the brush
pots/pans: if nothing caked on, just rinsed - otherwise we sometimes let them soak in the sink filled with some hot soapy water to get most everything off before they go in the dishwasher.