Do You Pre-Rinse Your Dishes? - Neatorama

Do you pre-rinse your dishes before washing them in the dishwasher? You may be wasting water, if you believe this research by Consumer Reports:

Some time-worn habits are hard to break like rinsing your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. But stopping this ritual pays off in time and money. Not only will you save water but the energy it takes to heat it as well. Dishwashers are made to do dirty jobs so just scrape the excess food from the plates and let the machine do the rest of the work.
Pre-rinsing your dishes in the sink can easily waste more than 6,000 gallons of water per household each year. If you want to wash your dishes before the machine is full, use the rinse-and-hold cycle, which uses about half the water you'd consume hand washing them. And to get the dishes their cleanest, load large items at the side and back so they don't block the water. And face the soiled surfaces inward so they're hit by the spray.

What do you think? Do you believe Consumer Reports?

Link - via The Consumerist

I've only owned a dishwasher for about a year, and I have never pre-rinsed my dishes. I scrape off food so that the dishwasher doesn't start to smell, because I load the dishwasher up to a couple of days before using it (I don't run it till it's full.)

Before I bought my dishwasher, I received plenty of advice from people older than I am who told me it was a waste of money to buy a dishwasher because "you basically have to wash the dishes by hand before you put them in the dishwasher, because otherwise they won't come clean."

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@Kalel -- if the dog does it well enough, you don't even need to wash!

I once tricked my wife into believing that I was just letting the dog lick the plates before putting them back into the cabinets.

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I guess it depends on how often you run your dishwasher. A big household may need to run it every day, but I'm lucky if I run mine twice a month. I pre-rinse so I don't have to hand wash later.

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I have never pre-rinsed in my life. If I had the time and energy to do that, I might as well just handwash them!

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My current dishwasher does a pretty good job of getting dirty stuff clean, especially if you use the pots and pans setting when necessary.

The dishwasher at my previous apartment did not, so I pre-rinsed the things that needed it. I suspect that pre-rinsing is better than having to run the dishwasher a second time.

I will also note that dishwasher detergent no longer has phosphates in it, so it may not do as good a job as it did 10 years ago.

I also conserve resources by not buying Consumer Reports.

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I can tell when my wife has loaded the dishwasher because I find bits of food stuck on the dishes.

When I load it (and rinse the food off), everything comes out clean.

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On a different note there are arguements from the actual article that say the buildup from crumbs and stuck on food get caught in some filter/tubing, but with a little bit of help from google and elbow grease, these are usually easy to fix on your own. However, I have had this particular dishwasher for 9 years and there have not been any malfunctions despite my lack of pre-rinsing. The one previous to this had issues with the filter that were easy enough to fix once we got the part.

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Clearly some of you don't have a dog. Pre-licking goes a long way.

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My roommate pre-rinses, but overloads the dishwasher so it still ends up with crap and soap residue all over everything. I don't pre-rinse and things are fine.

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I've been saying this for years. Why bother using a dishwasher if you're going to wash them ahead of time? I'll get the worst of the stuck-on bits off, but that's it. I do know that not all dishwashing detergent is created equal. Took a lot of testing but I found one a few years ago I swear by. Dishes come out perfectly clean, and I only have a cheap dishwasher that came with my apartment.

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No pre-rinse. If the dishwasher does not get every last trace of dirt, of even dried-on food, then you are either not loading it correctly or you have not dosed the chemicals as required.

Unless you have a 30-year-old machine, dishwashers do their job marvellously well without needing any manual assistance.

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I gave up rinsing dishes before loading when we got a new dishwasher several years ago, never had a problem with them coming out clean, even milk glasses and cereal bowls that have sat for 2-3 days.

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Yes, I pre-rinse my dishes. I don't bother to get them spotless, but if I leave any large pieces of food on the dishes, either they stay stuck to the dish or get spread around to other dishes. Do I waste water by doing this? Not really, just think of what it would cost not only in water but the extra energy to run the dishwasher to re-wash dishes that didn't come out clean the first time.

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I rince my dishes before so they don't smell the place up since I don't run the machine until it is full. Sounds like the green police made their way into Consumer Reports.

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@Brent "you get what other people make you pay for".

No. You make your own choices. If you choose to be influenced by others that's your problem.

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I stopped pre-rinsing years ago. Everything comes out clean.

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With over 25 years of dish washing acumen I can say that if you don't wipe of the remnants, load it incorrectly or fail to use a rinse agent then your dishes will look dirty even though they are sanitary. And seriously, it sucks to have first world problems just ask JFHC.

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I pre-rinse and occasionally wipe them with a paper towel because if I don't, they come out filthy. But then again, this dishwasher has had to be repaired over 20 times since we got it. So like anything else, you get what other people make you pay for. I wanted a really nice Bosch dishwasher and everyone else shot it down in favor of a POS Maytag. With the amount of money we have spent on repairs, energy, water, detergent... well, to put it mildly, we could have bought the Bosch and had the money to replace the ruined wood floor the dishwasher's flooding caused with a new wood floor instead of that ugly vinyl.

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It's called a dishWASHER for a reason. AND... today's detergents are so strong that if they don't have food residue to break up, they can etch your dishes that much more. The detergent will be more concentrated in the flushing water rather than in leftover food bits, and will wreak havoc on your pretty place settings over time.

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