I think I have found the most efficient way to do dishes by hand. I am not a huge fan of the dishwasher… I guess because we never had one growing up. I understand studies show that it’s the most effective and water-efficient method, but let’s toss that aside for a moment.
So I have a double bowl sink. I have a plastic tub that sits on the left tub, in which I put all the dirty dishes after a meal. After getting them in there, I usually wash my hands - so I run hot water and wash my hands over the tub - filling the tub with sudsy water.
I then come back when the tub is full (or close) and get the sponge, putting a little soap on it as well. I wipe all of the dishes (which takes no time because they’ve been soaking, rinse with hot water, and place on the rack to air dry (or alternately, in the dishwasher to dry).
That’s it… I can do dishes for three of us on a typical weeknight in about 5 minutes. If there’s pots to do, maybe 10. (I use the soapy water from the plastic tub for the pots and/or pans.)
I find getting organized (having all the dirty dishes in one place and soaking) to be the biggest part of the washing up process. If you train everyone in the house to put their dishes there, it takes no time at all. I’ll easily take that chore over all the other household duties 'cos it’s so easy and quick. The trick is to let Dawn do the work for you. And spray a little PAM on your bakeware and pans - less goop gets stuck on.
Clean off as much solid waste as possible into the trash (no trash disposal here), before it has a chance to dry.
If I’m alone and having something like a yoghurt and a cup of milk, then the cup gets filled with water and the spoon stuck in it, to wait to be washed along with the dishes from the next meal. Anything more than that gets washed yesterday.
If there is a pot or pan which has a lot of fat or something burned, it gets a dollop of soap and is left to stand with water while I eat.
Wet the Scotch-Brite. Apply soap to it. Scrub every item. Place items in sink as they get scrubbed.
Rinse under running water and leave to dry.
My current rented flat has a dishwasher but not a built-in drying rack and I’m sick of buying drying racks for places which don’t have one, so I’m using the dishwasher most of the time rather than wash by hand. Trash gets swipped off, stuff only gets rinsed before placing it in the washer in extreme cases (a thick sauce, and the wash is several days away).
My own home has a built-in rack and a dishwasher; my housesitter uses the washer to store the dishes, and only uses it for washing when he’s got guests. His washing method is similar to mine.
If it’s just my wife any myself (especially if I do the cooking), then I don’t fill the basin and leave the drain open, and have a large, sour cream container full of extra sudsy soap, and wash the dishes with the hot water running constantly. Wash and rinse in the basin, and then into the drainer. I say I do this especially when I cook because (unlike my wife) I tend to use a lot of big cooking hardware that doesn’t fit into the sink basin.
If I have a lot of dishes and don’t feel like running the dishwasher, then I fill the left basin (the big one) with hot, soapy water, fit as much of the dishes into it that I can, and then wash, filling the right (small) basin with the soapy dishes. When that right basin is overflowing, I spray rinse, then move the dishes to the drainer.
If I feel like using the dishwasher, they go straight in – no pre-rinse. If I’ve cooked, then I fit as much into the dishwasher as I can, and then wash the remainder per my first method described above.
In general I find that cookware doesn’t fit efficiently in the dishwasher with other items.
Oh, I forgot to mention: I don’t wash my cast iron stuff at all.
I just have one sink, so things tend to get done in a pretty inefficient manner. I’ll sponge off a dish with a soapy sponge, rinse it off, and put it on the dish rack. I then move onto the next dish. The water runs the entire time.
After 30 years with my SO, I still find my efforts are considered unworthy. I never seem to load the washer properly, nor put the estimated 4,452,836 tupperware lids in their proper place. So, I find that I can get dishes washed by simply waiting. It often includes a chorus of grumbling and cabinet doors closing with, umm, alacrity; But the dishes end up spotless (and I get to stay on the couch watching TV).
I don’t know if this answers your question, but it’s my preferred method.
I’ve just bought a new dishwasher, and things have certainly changed since I bought the last one. It has an econonmy wash that lasts just thirty minutes and uses (relatively) very small amounts of water and electricity. It somehow manages to clean everything: not only plates, glasses and cutlery, but encrusted saucepans and frying pans. I now avoid the washing up bowl almost completely.
Now that it’s just hubby and I the dishwasher runs about once a week.
I have recently bought a couple frying pans that I don’t put into the dishwasher, but those are so easy to wash that it’s a matter of swiping with a damp soapy cloth, a quick rinse under the tap and let air dry.
The only time I fill the sink with soapy water is when I’m baking. I tend to wash things(measuring spoons, large mixing bowls) as I go and reuse them so the sink starts off half full, I wash and rinse so the water continually rewarms the wash water. Depending on how much baking I’m doing I let the water half drain a couple of times throughout the process.
I am very bad. I usually run hot water over them and let them soak. Often I forget about them and do that again the next day. After I have done that too many times, I make a point of actually finishing the job.
However, by then it is usually very easy to wash them - in fact it is mostly just a rinse at that point.
Everything is scraped and filled with water for soaking if needed at the time of use and piled up next to the sink. The filthiest stuff is rinsed under the running tap whilst waiting for the hot water to come through. Once the water is hot the plug, glasses and cups go in the sink as it slowly fills. The glasses and cups are wiped out and rinsed under the running tap. Then plates go in the now full sink and are wiped, dunked back in the sink and placed on the draining rack. The cutlery goes in to soak once plates are done and plastic storage and microwave ware is washed, dunked and put on the rack. Cutlery is then wiped individually, dunked and placed on rack. The pots and pans are done in order of cleanest to feral, and placed on rack to dry. Cat food cans and bottles for recycling are swished out with the end of the water to get off the worst smelly crud and thrown in a box for taking to the recycling bin.
Dishwasher - nearly everything goes in there. If I remove the top rack, I can wash all kinds of household stuff like plastic footstools, milk crates, etc.
If I’m washing by hand, I don’t fill up the sink. I like having one large sink, not a double, because it hold larger pans. I scrape and rinse stuff off slightly as it goes into the sink during the day. To wash, I squeeze soap onto a nylon/sponge scrubby and wash each item, repositioning (sometimes moving them to the counter and back) them so that I end up with all the washed dishes back in the sink, then rinse one at a time so that the dishes underneath start getting rinsed from the dishes above. Done in no time, and no wasted sinkful of water. It seems to me that the soap goes further when it’s not diluted into a sinkful of water.
I always wash the dishes - I actually enjoy it. I have a plastic tub also. Plates, glasses, and utensils go into it first with soapy water, get cleaned off with a rescue pad or equivalent, quickly rinsed, and then into the dishwasher.
I don’t put pots and pans into the dishwasher, since with two of us we can led the dishes go for several days in there, but we’d need the pots again right away. I wash them next in the tub which now has only water, rinse well, (water going into the tub) and put into our drying rack. Assuming we haven’t used to many pots to fit, I let them air dry and put them away before going to bed.
My family got our first dishwasher in 1962 when we came back from Africa and were relatively rich, so I don’t really trust them to actually clean dishes.
I put the dishes, cutlery etc into the sink. I add water and a small amount of detergent. I wash everything. Then I dry all the items straight away and put them back into the cupboards and drawers.
I don’t rinse anything, or leave stuff to drain/dry.
Other than an annual use to keep it working, I never use the dishwasher.