Should you pre-rinse your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher?

Ok… so like many of you out there in Internet-land you’ve probably read this article from the “Experts” at yahoo telling you that you should not rinse your dishes because it doesn’t make a difference.

I don’t know about their experts, but I’ll go ahead and tell you that unlike them, I actually am an expert. I have 5 kids, the youngest of which is 18 years old. I’ve had them from birth to grown-up and we’ve had them all in the house every day. If you add the 2 – 7 kids they bring with them in the house at any given time we always have a TON of dishes.

That said the “Experts” over at Yahoo must live in wonderfully clean homes with maids and nanny’s and new $5,000 commercial dishwashers. For the rest of us however, we have to fight and pull teeth with everyone in the house to put their dishes in the sink let alone the dishwasher and stuff might sit for a day before it gets washed – because after cooking for 1000 people you just want to go to bed and do the dishes in the morning.

The “Experts” at Yahoo say pre-rinsing doesn’t make a difference and the avg dishwasher (modern) uses 5 gallons to wash your dishes vs. 27 gallons for you to hand wash them while the water is running.

I don’t know about you but sometimes engineer’s like Yahoo’s “Experts” can be pretty stupid. If you have to wash your dishes 5 times in the dishwasher because you didn’t pre-rinse them you are still using 25 gallons of water and it took 8 hours to do it. How is that better?

The answer is simple. Fill your sink up with warm water. Rinse your dishes, don’t be afraid to use a scrub brush to get stuck on stuff off. Do it real fast, you don’t have to get it clean you just have to get the big stuff off. Load your dish washer. Empty your sink. You don’t have to worry about the dirty water in your sink the dishes are going to get sanitized in the dish washer. This is the best way to get it done right the first time without using 27 gallons of water.  The reason I use a dishwasher at all is because pyschologically I feel better if my dishes go through the machine. I know they have been scalded with hot water for a period of time and that (I hope the engineer would be the expert on this one) because of that scalding they are safer and have less bacteria on them then if I did them by hand.

I don’t know why Yahoo feels that an engineer is an expert in household matters. Engineers that make dishwashers know how to make dishwashers, that’s great. It’s clear they don’t know how to wash dishes. (LOL!)

Anyway, in my Expert opinion this is the best way to do your dishes outside of hiring someone else to do them for you.