To think washing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher is ridiculous

[Anonymous2003]

Every night after dinner my boyfriend's family will fill a basin of hot soapy water and handwash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher covered in soap suds. This drives me nuts!! Isn't the point of a dishwasher to wash dirty dishes? If you've just hand washed them why not just put them away. I only rinse my dishes before the dishwasher because that's what it's for. I don't know anyone else who does this. I'm talking plates, cutlery etc btw, not just pots and pans.

I was going to comment on this too. We don’t even rinse our dishes before we put them in. Surely that’s the point of a dishWASHER?

Here’s a lovely video showing the inside of a dishwasher as it’s doing its job. Note the heavily soiled dishes at the beginning - its quite long so just fast forward through it!

Definitely no rinsing. That's a pointless exercise. I soak things that are baked on (lasagne dish/pie dish etc) but they still go in the DW rather than being hand washed.

And heres some top tips from Finish.

Try again!

The detergent actually NEEDS dirt in order for it to be effective. As long as the large particles are scraped off then the dishwasher will be much more efficient with the dirt left on. They are effectively wasting their time AND shooting themselves in the foot. If the plates are coming out dirty then they need to clean the filter more regularly and add salt and rinse aid - not have a dog and bark themselves...

...and your water

If we’ve had curry or something with garlic in it we give the plates a quick rinse under a hot tap as our dishwasher isn’t on every day. We don’t like it smelling if we open it. What’s the point of having a dishwasher if you’re going to wash dishes first?

depends how 'dirty' and how soon I am going to run the dishwasher.
Mug I'd had tea in - no - Mug that I'd had hot chocolate in, yes, because gungy froth/dried milk might not get cleaned properly. But probably only a rinse & flash of a sponge or brush; by the time you've go a bowl of soapy water, DW not required.

That is bonkers. Why use the dishwasher after then?

I don't wash or rinse anything. That is what the machine is there for.

And I use the sensor wash. So it runs a bit longer for a heavier load.

My PIL do this. They are quite pedantic people in general tbh.

Scrape food off plates and you don't need to rinse

The dishwasher rinses them before washing anyway

Apparently, modern dishwashers “sense” how cloudy the water is and adjust how much they clean accordingly - the clearer the water the less aggressively (for want of a better word) they clean. So it really is pointless washing them before putting them in the dishwasher. I don’t rinse either - scrape and straight in.

ETA - my pages just refreshed and I can see other PPs have already explained this much better than me!

That's what the filter is there for! If there were no bits for it to catch, it wouldn't be needed!

It's my mum's favourite fact that they're designed to work on dirty dishes and so rinsing is counter productive. Washing is pure insane.

Just scrape and load.

I guess I should be grateful that the biggest problem I have with my boyfriend's family is something so trivial! (Well, quite trivial...)