One Small Step: Scrape Instead of Rinse
July 10, 2008 by Peggy
If you’re hand washing or if your dishwasher isn’t so efficient, then you may need to rinse or soak your dishes. Soaking may even make the dishes easier to clean later.
However, if you have a newer dishwasher, skip the pre-rinse at the sink. Just scrape food off with a fork. Most newer dishwashers can handle that just fine. And even if you have doubts, try it at least once.
Not ready to turn your dishwasher on?
If it bugs you to leave particles on dishes, use your dishwasher’s pre-rinse or rinse-only cycle. Your dishwasher will use a very small fraction of the amount of water you would use when pre-rinsing dishes under the tap.
Pre-rinsing in the dishwasher typically uses one gallon of water. Pre-rinsing for five minutes under the tap? 25 gallons! (Rinsing figures from Journal of Extension.)
Do you load your dishwasher without pre-rinsing dishes?
Image via MorgueFile.
I don’t rinse! I rarely have problems even w/using less of our homemade soap. Most of the time the problems I do have stem from the fact that I (or some other occupant who might actually be trying to help!) had loaded the machine sloppily so dishes are touching too much. Thanks for encouraging others to go w/o rinsing!
Thanks DramaMama. Good to know there’s a no rinser without problems : )
We don’t rinse, and I grew up not rinsing because my parents didn’t want water wasted. They put a bowl scraper out by the garbage for everyone to use. We usually scrape with a fork, but it comes out clean.
DH, I grew up not rinsing too. We didn’t have a garbage disposal anyway.
If I’m going to run the dishwasher soon, I don’t rinse. It works fine; however, if I don’t run the dishwasher soon, it gets stinky. So if the dishwasher isn’t going to be full or something needs a soak, I have a few ways to minimize water-use. One is stopping up the sink when washing hands or rinsing vegetables and using that grey water for rinsing dishes later. Or after I handwash the big pots, etc., I use that gray water to rinse dishes for the dishwasher. Also, we compost, so the disposal gets little use.
Once I started paying attention, I found it easy to come up with ways to save water and change my kitchen water habits.