Alex O'Brien
Home & Garden

Why you shouldn’t pre-rinse before putting items in dishwasher

It’s a common kitchen argument all over the country – often one partner wants to rinse all of the dishes before placing them in the dishwasher, and the other wants to pop them straight in.

Finally we have the answer for you. While you should scrape off food scraps, you don’t actually need to rinse the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.

Why…?

Your dishwasher needs dirty dishes to work

The detergent actually needs to cling onto food particles in order to work. Without the particles they have nothing to attach to.

Your dishes won’t be any cleaner if you pre-rinse

Your dishwasher is a lot more high tech than you think, with super sprayers and even sensors to detect how dirty the plates are. Rinsing them before hand won’t make them any cleaner in the end, so why bother?

You will be wasting water

If all this pre-rinsing isn’t necessary, then you are wasting lots of water (and energy to heat that water). And research suggests that a typical dishwasher uses less water than washing the equivalent amount of dishes by hand.

You will be wasting time

Old habits die hard, but give the pre-rinsing the flick and you will save precious time on your kitchen clean up. That means more time to put your feet up, which is always a good thing.

Related links:

Tricks to cut vegetables faster

10 commonly refrigerated foods that don't need to be

Simple old-fashioned laundry tips

Tags:
cleaning, kitchen, dishes, dishwasher