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I rinse my dishes with the rinse cycle on the machine. I live alone and only run the dishwasher once or twice a week. However, I have found that if I just run the rinse cylce about every other night, my dishes come out the cleanest.
This morning I tried just wetting the dishes in the sink, soaping them, and then rinsing everything all at once. That will work for me so I am going to try to keep that up, in the interest of saving water. I have a very small sink and can't really expand for bigger one where it's situated.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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After a few years of having to constantly clean the nasty filters in the bottom of the dishwasher, we started to always rinse the dishes in the sink first. It's saved a lot of time and unpleasant effort. The filters are remaining clean and free of debris without cleaning.
I run the dishwasher every 3 weeks to a month. I don't eat that often as an old man, so I don't pile up dishes as fast. I also have a LOT of place settings, enough to fill a dishwasher. That is intentional. My plan is to have enough place settings to fill the entire dishwasher and still not run out of place settings.
My question is, can you scrape off excess food and then leave dry, crusted residue on your dishes and flatware for 20 or 30 days and then still have them come out clean when you finally run the dishwasher up to a month later?
As a single person (widower) I never use my dish washer. I do dishes by hand. I do run the dish washer every moth or so just to be sure it is functions properly.
I run the dishwasher every 3 weeks to a month. I don't eat that often as an old man, so I don't pile up dishes as fast. I also have a LOT of place settings, enough to fill a dishwasher. That is intentional. My plan is to have enough place settings to fill the entire dishwasher and still not run out of place settings.
My question is, can you scrape off excess food and then leave dry, crusted residue on your dishes and flatware for 20 or 30 days and then still have them come out clean when you finally run the dishwasher up to a month later?
That's close to my thinking about not pre-washing...
I don't run my dishwasher every day, husband and I fill it about every 5 days or so. So not as long as you, no, but still...
If I were to put gunked up, really dirty dishes into the dishwasher, either I'd have to run it every day or thereabouts...or else the food would dry on, which I'd think would necessitate more scrubbing than the machine can even do, to get them clean. A bunch of posters mentioned cheese. We eat a lot of cheese.
Not only that, but there would be more often than not, a bunch of food filth sitting there in the dishwasher, and I try to keep rotting food presence in my kitchen to a minimum, keep my kitchen very clean, because I don't want ants. We get some seriously determined tiny black ants here, and the best way to get rid of them is not to lure them into our home in the first place.
I put bowls into the sinks and when I wash my hands I let that water run into them to help them "soak" and I put smaller items nested inside of them to also soak. Then when I do the dishes (at least once a day), I'm just very quickly doing a rinse and brief wash (no scrubbing needed because of the soaking) and I move additional dishes, especially any plates that were stacked and not soaked, so that they sit in the sink under the running water where I am actively washing. That running water is doing double or triple duty! So food and grease is not on my dishes when they go into the dishwasher. And I run it on the shortest setting...honestly I wish there were a setting on it for "quick hot sanitize" because that's all I really want it to do.
Because I have a dishwasher though I don't take super extra care to really lather up my dishes with plenty of dishwashing soap, nor to meticulously make sure it's totally rinsed off...I used to do that when I hand washed, back when I was too poor to have a dishwasher in my home.
I run the dishwasher every 3 weeks to a month. I don't eat that often as an old man, so I don't pile up dishes as fast. I also have a LOT of place settings, enough to fill a dishwasher. That is intentional. My plan is to have enough place settings to fill the entire dishwasher and still not run out of place settings.
My question is, can you scrape off excess food and then leave dry, crusted residue on your dishes and flatware for 20 or 30 days and then still have them come out clean when you finally run the dishwasher up to a month later?
That's close to my thinking about not pre-washing...
I don't run my dishwasher every day, husband and I fill it about every 5 days or so. So not as long as you, no, but still...
If I were to put gunked up, really dirty dishes into the dishwasher, either I'd have to run it every day or thereabouts...or else the food would dry on, which I'd think would necessitate more scrubbing than the machine can even do, to get them clean. A bunch of posters mentioned cheese. We eat a lot of cheese.
Not only that, but there would be more often than not, a bunch of food filth sitting there in the dishwasher, and I try to keep rotting food presence in my kitchen to a minimum, keep my kitchen very clean, because I don't want ants. We get some seriously determined tiny black ants here, and the best way to get rid of them is not to lure them into our home in the first place.
I put bowls into the sinks and when I wash my hands I let that water run into them to help them "soak" and I put smaller items nested inside of them to also soak. Then when I do the dishes (at least once a day), I'm just very quickly doing a rinse and brief wash (no scrubbing needed because of the soaking) and I move additional dishes, especially any plates that were stacked and not soaked, so that they sit in the sink under the running water where I am actively washing. That running water is doing double or triple duty! So food and grease is not on my dishes when they go into the dishwasher. And I run it on the shortest setting...honestly I wish there were a setting on it for "quick hot sanitize" because that's all I really want it to do.
Because I have a dishwasher though I don't take super extra care to really lather up my dishes with plenty of dishwashing soap, nor to meticulously make sure it's totally rinsed off...I used to do that when I hand washed, back when I was too poor to have a dishwasher in my home.
I rinse dishes without soap. I only use soap if food is stuck on and needs soap to remove. This is rare, since I rinse dishes immediately after a meal.
If I have expecially stubborn goop such as rich sauces or cheese or I use the microwave which will bake material onto the plate or bowl, I just use paper plates and bowls instead and toss them out.
I don't use many paper plates or bowls, but if I am going to microwave refried beans or some such, instead of ending up with a bunch of crusted residue on a ceramic plate, I just use a paper plate instead.
I assumed he meant that this is why he pre washes the dishes.
Now that you react in this way, and I re-read it, I will say instead...I HOPE he was explaining why he pre-washes his dishes.
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