Have you seen this article? It made me so happy when I saw it on my friend Andrea’s blog.
“Pre-rinsing dishes is a big mistake,” said John Dries, a mechanical engineer and the owner of Dries Engineering, an appliance design consulting company in Louisville, Ky. “People assume that the dishwasher will perform better if you put in cleaner dishes, and that’s not true. Just scrape. Pre-rinsing with hot water is double bad, because you’re pumping water and electricity down the drain.”
It’s actually triple bad, according to Mike Edwards, a senior dishwasher design engineer at BSH Home Appliances in New Bern, N.C. “Dishwasher detergent aggressively goes after food,” Mr. Edwards said, “and if you don’t have food soil in the unit, it attacks the glasses, and they get cloudy,” a process known as etching that can cause permanent damage.
So college roomies… I was on to something when you thought I was just being lazy.
September 2nd, 2009 on 9:22 am
That’s pretty funny! Never thought that something I’m too lazy to do, is not even necessary!
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September 2nd, 2009 on 9:36 am
Oh my fiance will be so happy to see this article so we can stop pre-washing our dishes! Makes sense after it’s explained - Thanks!
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September 2nd, 2009 on 9:49 am
I think our dishwasher would disagree - but only because it is my husband!
Someday though, we’ll have a non-human dishwasher, and I’ll remember this so I can refrain from rinsing like I know I’ll want to.
I could have used an article like this to show my dad when I was a teenager…
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September 2nd, 2009 on 10:51 am
That’s interesting.
If we don’t get all of our food off the dishes, the residue remains stuck on. Silverware remains grody. Or worse - the mess spreads! An oatmeal bowl turns into oatmeal covered glasses.
Maybe it is true with newer model dishwashers, ours is at least 10 years old.
And we don’t have crystal to worry about scratching, so I guess I’m good there. So far our IKEA glasses are good for it.
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September 2nd, 2009 on 11:22 am
Old and/or crappy dishwashers still need a pre-rinse in my experience… and I think one should always pre-rinse anything that cereal was in. Oatmeal, grits, little chunks of Raisin Bran flakes are all IMPOSSIBLE to get off once they’ve dried.
Someday, maybe I can be lazy too and have a non-human dishwasher. I hate doing the dishes.
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September 2nd, 2009 on 11:36 am
Haha!! Maybe with GOOD dishwashers, but the ones at BYU sure won’t do the trick
. My sister has one too that really sucks. I had a roommate though who’s family had a dishwasher with an amazing garbage disposal built in and you could put an entire ham in that thing and you’d be fine.
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September 2nd, 2009 on 12:17 pm
I still think this is the best article. Thanks for the shout out! I’m jealous of all the DC fun you had!
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September 2nd, 2009 on 2:24 pm
Yeah, we definitely have to pre-rinse ours… but only for certain foodstuffs. If it’s a sauce, I don’t bother. But anything like rice, cereal, or another grain will end up blasted all over everything else if I don’t rinse it off.
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September 2nd, 2009 on 4:46 pm
wow, this is revolutionary! My mom will never believe me if I tell her about this. haha.
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September 2nd, 2009 on 5:40 pm
haha, that’s great! i wonder if it has anything to do with how long before you run the dishwasher - right now with just the two of us we sometimes don’t run it more than once every 10 days, so stuff gets pretty dried on…
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September 2nd, 2009 on 5:40 pm
Ha, ha. I would agree that good washers do the job - so I will never put up with a bad washer!! It drove me crazy how my grandad washed the dishes before he washed the dishes in the dishwasher…either get a better washer or just spend the extra 5 minutes and wash them all by hand anyway. I’ll remember this advice!
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September 2nd, 2009 on 7:39 pm
Woohoo! Another excuse not to rinse my dishes
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September 2nd, 2009 on 10:06 pm
Yes…I totally agree…especially because this morning Tyler thought the dirty dishes were clean and put them away…wanna come over to eat again:)
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September 2nd, 2009 on 11:28 pm
My mother will never believe this! I just won a fifteen year long debate.
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September 3rd, 2009 on 10:17 am
not sure what’s going on but when I try to access this blog the virus scanner I have keeps deleting trojan viruses. just fyi
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September 8th, 2009 on 8:15 pm
Yep, does not work AT ALL with Cory’s dishwasher. I was very disappointed. He lives in a really nice apartment complex too.
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September 11th, 2009 on 11:38 pm
Thank you so much for sharing this article! This is actually, embarassingly, a huge source of contention in our relationship.. I think it’s ridiculous to wash dishes twice, and he just has to do it! I finally win the logic side of this argument, if not the emotional side.
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September 12th, 2009 on 8:12 pm
Whoa! That is an interesting tidbit of information - I had no idea about this…next time I load the dishwasher, I am only going to scrape and see how that works!!!
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September 26th, 2009 on 7:40 pm
Thanks so much! My father in law basically said I killed my last dishwasher because I don’t pre-rinse! I said back that some residue should be on the plates for the machine to do it’s job. Nice to know there is validation out there!
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