I rinse mine completely so there is no food residue, then sanitize them in the dishwasher, which has a “light wash” setting which saves power and water. Though relatively new, it is a cheap dishwasher that won’t get rid of any crusty residue.
I rinse them quickly, get stuff like melted cheese off. We only wash the dishes every few day. It’s a new washer, I donno, maybe it would be fine with difficult dried on stuff.
For those of you that don’t rinse at all, do you let your dishes sit in the washer? Or always wash right away.
We have a Bosch and it does a great job. If the cooking pots are particulary gross, I’ll put the machine on Pots and Pans setting and they come out perfectly clean, and it takes about 20 minutes less time than the regular setting. My husband, on the other hand, washes all of the dishes before he puts them in the machine and it makes me crazy. (I do rinse off the chunks so it doesn’t clog the drain basket.)
Rinse clean. But if I’m going to go that far, I’ll just hand wash them. So I just hand wash them. It’s just my wife and I, so it’s not like we’re talking about tons of dishes. When I cook I clean as I go, so once the meal is done, it’s just plates and utensils.
Once my wife chose to allow me to buy & install a dishwasher, (it is her kitchen), I use it all the time. Before that we hand washed the dishes.
I put dirty dishes in it as they get dirty. Once it is full, I add soap & turn it on. Then about one hour later, I take the clean dishes out & put them away. I refuse to do the machines job for it. However, if a pot or pan is so cruddy that I seriously doubt the machines ability to get it clean, I soak it in the sink for a while. Then I scrub it clean & rinse it with HOT water. After it dries, I put it away. She appreciates me “doing” the dishes.
As the dishes get dirty, we put them in the dishwasher. This works well as any dishes in the dishwasher are dirty. The grungy pot & pans go into the sink to rinse right away. Thus when I run the dishwasher, I can scrub the pots & pans at the same time. This way all of the dishes are clean at the same time.
The dishwasher will get run when it is full, often this is four days after we first start to fill it. No problems so far. We have had the machine for over ten years now.
One thing I do miss about hand washing the dishes is the comradeship that we experienced washing the dishes together. If we move to a house that does not have a dishwasher, I may not buy one for this reason.
IMHO, If I need to prewash the dishes, I need to repair or replace the machine.