My mama brought me up right, I know that the “proper” way to wash dishes is to fill the sink with hot soapy water and submerge them, and if I have guests or am washing dishes at someone else’s house that’s how I do it. But when there are no witnesses, I just run hot water, put some soap on my scrub brush, wash away under the running water, then rinse.
I know that (within limits) having a shower to wash my body is more environmentally friendly than having a bath, and I always feel cleaner after a shower than a bath, and I assume that the same logic would apply to dishes. Yet for some reason I feel enormously guilty that I shower my dishes instead of bathing them. I really believe I use less water this way, and the dishes get just as clean if not cleaner, so I don’t know why I feel I have to hide my shameful secret.
Are any of you dish showerers? Do you have to defend your habit to the bathers?
Growing up I’d see mom bathing the dishes- fill the left sink w/hot soapy water, submerge everything, scrub and rinse with cool water over the right sink. But when I moved away in 1985, and until earlier this year, everywhere I lived I only had one sink. I don’t think it makes sense to rinse the clean dishes over the submerged items, so I began showering them.
After 23 years of showering, I’m having a hard time relearning the bathing method. So sometimes I bathe (when I think of it, or there’s a ton of stuff to wash and I know I’ll be there a while), but usually I just shower them. It’s quicker.
I shower my dishes, too - I agree with XJETGIRLX. Not really sure what the point is of baths anyway - water gets cold, and modern bathtubs kind of suck for it.
For most foods (at least the ones we eat in this house), it would take a lot more water and dishwashing liquid to do it under running water.
I do the plates this way:
-Scrape any removable food pieces into the recycling container
-Rinse* under the tap (as I’m waiting for the hot water to come through the pipes), stack
-Fill a plastic washing up bowl with hot water and a squirt of fairy liquid
-Wash the plates fully immersed, using sponge scourer pad and/or brush
-Stack edgeways in a wire drainer
-Rinse by pouring over a few jugs of plain water
-Drain
-Dry with a towel and put away
I very much doubt I could get the plates properly clean using an equivalent amount of water - I only use a couple of gallons in the bowl.
Try putting the plug in the sink and see how much water you’re really using - if you want…
*The first rinse is important if there’s a lot of gravy or sauce on the plates - otherwise the water in the bowl will get too dirty before the job is done.
This requires nesting. If I have a bowl of cereal, I fill it with water and a drop of soap, leave it in the sink. Then if I have a bowl of ice cream, same thing, nesting inside the bowl from the cereal to save space. Same thing with plates. I also keep a big gulp cup about 3/4 full of water for silverware and utensils, let them soak.
The main thing is you can get dried on, gunky food if you don’t soak and then the shower will be more difficult. Letting them sit awhile helps dissolve that junk first.
I use the dishwasher for everything except pots and pans and their lids. Those get rinsed to remove gunk, then washed in a sink full of hot soapy water, rinsed again, and put on the drying rack.
But if there’s only one or two pots, I’ll do the squirt of soap/shower thing.
If the dishwasher breaks, I’ll do dishes the way mom did them – full bath in one sink, rinse under running water in the other sink. But my husband’s method is to fill the second sink with hot water – sort of a bath/rinse. The rinse water gets soapy but he doesn’t care.
I shower my dishes. The thought of submerging my hands into water that may have food gunk swimming around in it for some reason disgusts me. It’s even worse when the water is cold.
For a short time back in the 90s, the town I was living in had an e coli leak in the water system. So we would soak our dishes with a capful of ammonia, shower them, and then boil water and scald rinse them.
You don’t need to have your hands submerged into food-y water. That’s what the yellow gloves they sell in the cleaning aisle are for, people!
I love using the yellow gloves because not only do they keep my nail polish from being ruined and my hands from touching gross food-water, it means I can fill the sink with full-on HOT water (the gloves insulate your hands enough). Soak the dishes, then rinse with full-on HOT water, put in drainer (or my preferred “other side of double sink”. :: sigh :: I miss that).
A continuous shower of water uses more water than just filling up the sink once and doing brief rinses.
I shower my dishes unashamedly, a habit which I learned from my Japanese SO, and which is also mandated by our single sink. I use insulated rubber gloves so I can wash with the hottest water available.
When I was a child we used the soak and wash in one sink, rinse in another method (fortunately I was the drier and my sister was the washer). By the time we got to the pots and pans, the water was dirty and not much soap was left. I never liked that method.
And I don’t care if showering uses more water. The dishes are cleaner; and anyway I don’t turn the water on full blast. And I don’t use a dishwasher, so I think I’m still saving over that method.
Something I would very much like is the kind of foot-control switch for the kitchen sink that I’ve seen in hospitals, so I could easily turn the water on and off as I need to rinse each dish. That would really save water.
Roddy
I use a dishwasher, but when using a sink I always shower. It gets them clean, while bathing has them soaking in a tub of bacteria. I think I remember reading somewhere that your kitchen sink has more bacteria than the toilet (seat?). I normally use the dishwasher because a) I’m lazy and b) it is the most environmentally friendly.
I fail to understand how scrubbing dried on egg yolk off each plate under a continuous shower of water isn’t wasting a metric assload more water than letting 4 plates with dried egg yolk soak in hot sudsy water for five minutes first.
Especially because while they’re soaking (and before the water changes from hot clean sudsy water to cold bacteria-ridden pond scum) I’ve already washed the four juice glasses, four knives and forks and two mugs and quickly rinsed them. I fill the empty rinsing side of the sink with the freshly washed dishes, stacking until it’s full or until all of the cups/silverware are done, then the plates and pots and pans. Rinse dishcloth out under hot running water while sink is draining, wipe down table, counter and stove and finish up by rinsing out both sinks. 10 minutes, tops.
Soaking in hot soapy water does 90% of the work by itself, scrubbing under running water is much more labor intensive and seems to waste a lot more soap and water.
When I had to wash by hand, I’d fill the sink with soapy water, soak, scrub, and stack. Then I’d empty the sink and put the stacked, washed dishes back in, and rinse them all under running water. All told, I woudn’t use 2 full sinks of water.
Now, I knock the big chunks off then load everything into the dishwasher.
What my mother taught me to do is to scrub the dishes and stack them (staggered, so they don’t stick together) by the sink, with the water turned off. Then, rinse the dishes under the tap and put them in the dish drain to air dry.
I don’t like touching wet food gunk either. I wear Playtex gloves – the water starts hot and is still hot when I’m finished. I watched a friend do dishes once – she didn’t even scrape the plates before they went into the dishpan. Blech.
