Well, I don’t have a double sink, so I do it the “one item at a time” way. I disagree that it uses more water, though.
Damp down all dishes with water (run the tap over them), turn off tap
DO WHILE DISHES > 0
Pick up top dish
Squirt soap on sponge if sponge is not soapy enough
Wipe dish/scrub if food is crusted on
Turn on tap a bit, rinse off
Turn off tap
Put dish on drying rack
LOOP
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Of course, it helps that I live in an area (or used to) where I had soft water, and didn’t have to wipe dry. And it also helps if you wash you dishes RIGHT AFTER you eat, so you don’t have to soak to get the crusted bits off. And there is just no way that you can wash pots and pans in the 2 sink method, unless you live in some restaurant.
We have a dishwasher, but I wash the dishes by hand anyway. My family got our firwst dishwasher in 1962, and I’ve never quite trusted them to get anything significant off. So I wash (but not dry) the silverware, dishes and glasses. The pots and pans I wash by hand.
Our sink is divided, but one side is small, so I use a dishpan and a ScotchBrite (Rescue) pad.
Dishwasher owner here. But there are a few things that need handwashing, and we went for a few years in our house WITHOUT a dishwasher. (The horror…the horror…)
And, to top it all off, we never had a double sink when we didn’t have a dishwasher. So—
Pile dirty dishes on side of sink, on drainboard (if available). Keep sink empty.
Wet kitchen sponge, douse scrubber side with dish soap. (More soap needs to be applied, periodically)
Take dish or cup to be washed. Rise it, wetting it and clearing off as much grime as possible under water stream. Scrub it clean with sponge, rise it.
Put clean dish on other side of sink/drainboard, on a dishtowel. (If they’re not air-dried enough to put on the shelf by the time the washings done, they’ll be dried afterwards with a fresh dishtowel.)
(Repeat 3—4 until fished with dishes.)
To save water (and the HOT water), we’d try to turn off the faucet between rinsings.
Woo woo! Thank you all for the confirmation that I am, in fact, correct. I’ll have to have a talk with Mr. Athena’s mother one of these days to determine where he got his strange dishwashing ideas.
For what it’s worth, we have a double sink, and it’s a lovely one - the left hand side is extra wide, so it fits an entire skillet or big pan. I rinse under warm or cool water instead of filling up the right sink for rinsing. We have a well and septic, so I don’t worry about “wasting” water. It comes out of the ground, it goes back into the ground. The worst I waste is the bit of energy it takes to heat it.
Athena, your husband’s way would waste a lot of soap. Put soap in each dish? Even with a small squirt for each dish, if you have more than a few you’ll waste soap. Nobody has mentioned the principle of progressive dirtyness- my wife insists on washing things in order from cleanest to dirtiest. So your long-stemmed glasses might be first washed, your mixing bowls might be in the middle, and things like pans that you fried bacon in would be last. The idea is that you want as little suspended food in the dishwater for as long as possible.
I loathe having to do the dishes by hand. I am positive it has something to do with living in the home of an ex-friend who made me into her own personal Cinderella (gag - she’d leave me a huge list of things to do while she was out, I would work to exhaustion because she said it was her house, so I had to live by her rules… fair enough. She would come home and complain about any spots I missed. Hey, lady, notice how you could eat off the floors? Or how shiny your windows are? Or how the dishes are done and dried and put away? And there’s no dust? And your plants are alive? And I cleaned your pigsty of a bedroom? And the toilet and tub sparkles? And your pets are both bathed - and one of them is a Rottweiler? And I missed a spot on the bottom shelf of the fridge, under the glass in the back?! The size of a dime that looks like cherry Kool-Aid that I don’t drink or touch?! What will the guests say! Horror!)
Okay, you get the picture, I’m a little bitter about dishes (and etc). I did them twice a day, every day, and all I ever used was one bowl and one spoon, rewashed for every time I would use it… because I had to. This… this beast would make a “snack” and haul out every pot and pan and dish she owned. And by Og, it had to be fried. And so, my method was:
Fill the sink with hot, soapy water.
Do glasses first.
Plates/bowls second.
Silverware.
Greasy pots and pans last, let soak for about half an hour.
Get out the SOS pads and scrub them down.
Drain.
Dry the dishes.
Put dishes away.
Clean the sink.
Five hours later, repeat.
Sigh deeply and discontentedly.
Oh, and I didn’t just dunk my hands into greasy, icky water, I donned my pink rubber gloves first, used just for washing dishes, and I tend not to go in up to my elbows. It was one of those double sinks, and I would rinse each plate off, then set each dish into a slot to air dry while I did the other dishes.
Today, I refuse to live in an apartment or house without a dishwasher. My husband is very aware of this. I’ll throw* everything * into the dishwasher, I don’t care. If I go too far, hubby steps in and cleans a pan or two by hand. We don’t own any nice dinnerware, so in it all goes.
And he never, ever mentions anything if I’ve missed a spot in the back of the refridgerator. And for that alone, I keep a spotless household. I just don’t. do. dishes.
I have a dishwasher and in a perfect world any dirty dish would go straight from the table to the dishwasher but that doesn’t always happen here. So dirty dishes get stacked in a dishpan in the sink. For some reason silverware scraping on the steel sink really gets to me.
When the pan gets full or after a meal, I fill the pan with hot soapy water to remove any large amount of food then load the dishwasher. When dishwasher is loaded I hand wash the remaining things and place them in the empty sink rinsing them under running cold water. Sometimes if I am just hand washing a few things I use the top rack of the dishwasher for a drainer.