Oo, I hate when people do that! What I hate even more, though, is that the craptastic dishwasher in our current apartment doesn’t even have a spinny spray-bar for the top rack! So we have to be careful about how we load dishes in to make sure that enough water gets from the bottom to the top, and anything going on top had better be pre-rinsed.
See, our dishwasher seems to be a piece of crap. Almost everything ends up with something between residue and flat-out gunk. Though I’ve never tried to clean it… I think I’ll do that this weekend.
My roommate is not allowed to run the dishwasher. We came to this conclusion when he ran the dishwater with about 12 ounces of brownie still in the pan and it didn’t work until we called the landlord to fix it. (I refused to make the call, because I didn’t want some repairman yelling at me for doing something that stupid.)
Since the brownie incident, I’m become almost obsessive about soaking. First time I walk into the kitchen after work, I fill all the dirty dishes in the sink with hot water (our water’s gotta be like 175 degrees). Fill up the dishwasher with stuff that appears mostly clean, run it, and then re-soak the still-dirty stuff with hot water and dish soap.
I do it, and I’m proud of it. My SO has special care instructions for every pot, pan, plate, wooden utensil and every fucking plastic item. She can never be arsed to clean anything herself though.
It all goes in the dishwasher the minute she walks out the door.
** Anne **it is a Maytag. This one is six years old but be aware that the last time I checked Consumer Reports tests on dishwashers it was only barely in the top third.
Maybe I just lucked out on a good model or maybe I just have a knack of knowing where to place all of the dishes.
Cats are doggone good at it too.
I’m a slob, I admit. It’s okay since I live alone. But I don’t load the dishwasher until the sink and counters are full. By then the chocolate milk has dried to the bottom of the glass, the cereal dust has become concrete, the spaghetti sauce has dried to gory remnants.
It all comes clean.
There are a few things I have to pre-rinse. Refried beans like to stick to everything. Anything that doesn’t come clean, I scrub clean and dump back in there. If I’m going to have to pre-wash it, I just finish washing it and put it away.
Just buy lots more cereal bowl and save your sanity. It’ll be worth it. The DW wars never end.
The last time I had a dishwasher was years ago with an ex-girlfriend. She would NEVER rinse the dishes beforehand. She was used to have a super powerful, bling bling dishwasher. No. We had a glorified hot water/soap sprayer. And no matter HOW many times I’d pull out a ‘clean’ dish that was covered in food after the cycle, she would refuse to believe that they needed rinsed off.
And then my last boyfriend, we didn’t have a dishwasher so everything was done by hand. Well he refused to use hot water. Just cold water and a soapy sponge. Got into a lot of arguments about that and I finally just completely took over the dishwashing duties.
When started my last job as a Nanny, my boss gave me strict instructions on how to load the dishwasher. She was told by the salesman that it wasn’t necessary to pre-rinse and that the dishes came out cleaner if you didn’t. I think that is fine if you wash the load right away, but some loads sat in there a few days, and then it didn’t seem to work so well.
I was so sneaky, that I pre-rinsed anyway! Ha…and I didn’t even get fired.
I know they miss me, because for 10 years I was the only one in that house who unloaded the dishwasher. Man I hate that job.
Get some plastic or Corelle ones. You’ll want them when the baby is old enough to eat from the table.
I am adamant about not pre-washing. My father-in-law always does–there is no way to tell clean from dirty so he got one of those reminder thingies that sticks to the front of it. I think that’s just hideously wasteful. His glassware is all pitted and cloudy; anything that was ever printed on a glass there is long faded. I strongly believe the detergent is designed to knock food off the dishes, not to just ricochet off clean surfaces!
At home, we used to get residue in the dishwasher from using powder, but we have switched to the Ecover tablets and they are FANTASTIC. Everything gets shiny clean with no pre-rinsing and there’s no filmy buildup on the dishwasher door.
If you have tile or stained concrete floors, the Corelle is right out.
I’m happily surprised that we don’t have any DW wars at my house. All of us seem to have the same habits per loading, unloading, and any pre-rinsing. I don’t care how someone else loads it; if they’re willing to do that for me I just smile and say “Thanks!”. If someone else is unloading and they don’t know where an item goes, they just leave it on the counter and I put it away later. We have dishwasher harmony. 
Doing too much pre-rinsing could actually make things worse. See, dishwasher detergent is an abrasive; if there’s no crud for it to clean off the dishes, it’ll start scratching up the dishes themselves, making your glassware all etched and cloudy. Just scrape off the big chunks and let the dishwasher take care of the rest. It’s a “dishwasher”, not a “clean dish sanitizer”.
When I had a dishwasher that is how I did them as well. Everything went in, until it was full. No pre-rinse. I worked fine.
Of course, as a bachelor, I’m not too picky either.
I only did a quick skim and didn’t see it posted here, but my sister has a dishwasher with a garbage disposal in it. They throw stuff in there with chunks on it and don’t bat an eye.
But still, isn’t letting the dish washer run and then clean off the odd unclean plate still less work than indiscriminately pre-rinsing everything and then putting it into the dish washer? Not to mention less water wasteful.
As for strange plate stacking/blocking the rotor thingie, my dad once inadvertently gave me some insight into the motivation behind that – I saw him put some overly long piece of cutlery into the little basket, and observed: ‘I don’t think that’ll work.’ - ‘Why not?’ - ‘The spinning thing will get stuck on it.’ - ‘What spinning thing?’
So I went over to give it a whirl, and sure enough, it snagged on the whatever it was. ‘So, why does that thing have to spin at all? Does it churn the water?’ - ‘What do you mean, churn? It sprays water and soap over the dishes…’ And then it dawned on me – my dad thought that during the wash cycle, the whole washing machine was completely filled with water, and then something something, and the dishes come out clean.
My hubby has a nasty habit of throwing everything into the dishwasher. I’m not precious, but there are simply some things that are not dishwasher safe and will melt/smash/corrode or whatever. So the bit from inside the rice cooker has had the surface stripped from it and all our expensive knives have rust marks on them.
We use a dishwashing liquid and it seems to be gentler on the glasses. I hate glasses being scratched and cloudy from too much dishwashing.
Oooooh. I want one of those.
I found that Jet Dry and its ilk worked wonders to prevent scratching and clouding. YMMV.
I’ve never noticed the scratching and clouding thing myself, but maybe I’m using wimpy dishwashers. Is that why you’re not supposed to put wine glasses in the dishwasher?