Are you one of those people who own a perfectly good, modern dishwasher, yet still insist on rinsing those dirty dishes before loading them into said appliance?

My wife is one of those folks, I hate to admit. She just can’t believe our Maytag will get the dishes truly clean unless we basically wash them by hand first.

We’re pretty traditional at our house. She does most of the cooking (everything except grilling) and I do the cleanup. So I’m the one stuck doing the unnecessary work.

So, I looked it up. Dishwasher manufacturers uniformly say prewashing is NOT required. Or even recommended. Just scrape off the large chunks and load ‘er up. This saves water, too, by the way. So when you skip the pre-rinse, you’ll not only get dishes clean, you’ll be doing something green.

As I scoured the internet on the subject, I found many testimonials from folks who let the dishwasher do its dirty job. One woman said she once left dirty, grotey dishes sitting in the DW for several days while she was away—with absolutely no prerinsing—and when she finally came back and ran them through the machine, they came out sparkling clean.

Now, if I could only convince my wife.

That’s it for now, B.B.