I stopped pre-rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher after 32 years

My wife caught me scrubbing plates last Tuesday and asked why I was doing the machine's job. Turns out modern dishwashers have sensors that adjust based on how dirty the water is, and I was wasting about 15 minutes a night for nothing. Anyone else get that realization after decades of doing it the old way?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaron_mitchell8d ago

And here I was thinking my dad was just being lazy when he stopped rinsing plates back in the 90s, but now it looks like he was ahead of the curve on this whole dishwasher tech thing. I still catch myself scraping food into the trash even though I know the machine can handle it, it's just one of those habits that's hard to kill after 30 years. Feels like we've all been doing extra work for no reason this whole time.

sagecooper7d ago

Had the same problem breaking that habit. What finally worked for me was just leaving the scrap bin under the sink completely empty for a week. If there's nowhere to scrape, you just open the door and load it in. My wife still pre-rinses everything like the machine is from 1992 though. Took me about a month before I stopped instinctively walking to the trash with a plate in my hand.

phoenix_bailey7d ago

My grandpa never used a dishwasher at all, just hose everything off in the yard and call it good.