I err on the side of thoroughness, but I use so much more time & water than others I see. I think I’m doing a better job… does it matter?
I want to watch an in-depth video of the minimum required washing. If you know or are a science educator (microbiologist? Epidemiologist?), maybe you can help :D
You should look into restaurant health codes regarding washing dishes.
Spoiler alert: 3 sink method for when the dishwasher is broken
I can’t find a copy of it right now, but there was a show on Nat Geo called “Going Deep with David Rees.” In it, he explores seemingly trivial concepts. One episode is about exactly this.
Fantastic.
Season two episode eight is how to do the dishes! Edit: it was their series finale :)
Did watching it it help you?
Didn’t watch but hope to!
I loved the episodes about coin flipping and tying shoes!
Not sure about hand washing. But if you want to save water/detergent, and have access to a dishwasher, oh boy can I help. Just search “Technology Connections dishwasher” and get ready to learn!
Fab series (latest here 👇)
I was right about dishwasher pods, and now I can prove it — Technology Connections (Nov 4, 2025), ~2.6M views
Now I wanna become the hand dishwashing expert!
Wow, that was a long, informative watch. Kinda wish they had a tldr;
My take:
- Run water until it’s hot prior to starting dishwasher
- Powder is probably intentionally ‘nerfed’ at the store to sell pods
- Pods didn’t necessarily outperform powder
Unfortunately, the product that they came up with is probably more expensive than my Costco pods. But at least I learned stuff.
The Costco pods are like magic and they’re so cheap. They changed my life (literally, I save many minutes every day and my mental health is better. I hate dirty dishes so much. I don’t even rinse before loading my dishwasher now. )
To hand wash dishes, fill the sink with some water and a bit soap. Then take one dish, clean in the sink, wash, rinse with some warm fresh water, put it away to dry. Start cleaning the the non greasy dishes like glasses, coffee cups, then move on to the dirtier and greasy dishes. Empty the sink if the water gets to dirty. For dirty dishes you need hot water to get them clean, otherwise the grease won’t disolve. Leave the dishes out to air dry for 1 to 2h, but must cutlery must be hand dried otherwise you might get spots on them.
Empty the sink if the water gets to dirty.
Use the dirty water to prewash very dirty dishes before you empty the sink so the “new” water isn’t instantly dirty again.
How many others do you see washing dishes for you to feel comparatively wrong in your method? I think you’re overthinking it.
See them? Zero
The most common problem I have with other people’s dishes (often relatives) is that they are greasy after it’s been washed because they use the same water for the entire set of dishes and especially if their dish washing order sucks.
When hand washing I always do it in a particular order:
Re-usable Water Bottles, Pot lids which are not visibly dirty, Glasses/Cups, Utensils.
If the water is now greasy, I will drain and re-fill at this point.
Then Plates and bowls, Baking pans that are not greasy, Pots, Frying Pans, then Baking pans that are greasy.
I can’t say I have ever used the filled sink method, except to steep items. I run the hot water at a lowish pressure and wash with a soapy sponge then rinse each item. It doesn’t matter what order I do it and there’s no pool of water to get greasy.
Do you only have a single sink? Most homes here come with double sinks (left and right)
I put hot soapy water in the left, and then pull things out and wash, then rinse in the right.
The soaking makes it significantly easier to scrub/wash grime and grease off.
https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/cleaning/best-way-to-hand-wash-dishes-a1749842004/
Double sink, but I have kids, so one sink is pretty much just for their bottles, cups etc or for soaking pots and pans.
I hate having anything inside the sink when it’s not actively being washed. Anything dirty that doesn’t directly go in the dishwasher sits on the counter to the right of the sink until such time as it can be washed.
My in-laws house is terrible for this, both sinks full of dirty dishes all the time. You have to remove them all before you can start the washing process, it’s absolutely stupid. You can’t even wash your hands in the sink properly because of it.
Thank you! I hate needing to use the sink only to find dishes piled up in there.
My wife, however, hates dishes on the counter, and will balance EVERYTHING in the sink.
I had a girlfriend that wouldn’t rinse the soap off the dishes after she washed them. Just put them straight in the strainer. I’m like, “no wonder you’re so thin”.
I was told that it can give you the runs…
So many ethincally British people wash dishes like that and it’s beyond disgusting.
Filling a tub with soapy water to dunk dirty plates and cups in and then sticking them straight onto a draining board, is literally just adding more yuck to your crockery for bacteria to grow on.
And these people would complain about wasting water and stuff not being clean when I washed things with soap and hot running water?!
Seriously, the stuff you eat off should not smell like rotting raw meat has been rubbed all over it, when it’s ‘clean’.
When I lived with housemates, those of use who weren’t ethnically from here could pretty reliably tell who was ethnically British just by opening their cupboard in the kitchen.
That explains their teeth
It’s not the soap, it’s the dishwasher rinse aids.
Hand washing…
Never mind, I get what you mean.
it’s soap, a power surfactant and anti-bacterial. Scrub in one sink of warm soapy water, rinse quickly in another sink with clear warm water.
The big problem with washers is the pods with clearing agents to prevent water spots, that stays on dishes and destroys the human microbiome if ingested, as well as the gut lining. Where’s RFK Jr on this?
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(22)01477-4/fulltext
Wait rinse aid is bad?
I’m curious as to what your method is, and what you are comparing it to.
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Scrub every inch and cranny real good with soapy water
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Even try to leave the soap on for 30 seconds if I can wash other stuff in the meantime
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Rinse very thoroughly so nary a hint of a sud remains
Prioritize dishwasher for everything that won’t be damaged
If you have enough sinks, or a big enough pot to soak them in, one soak in hot soapy water, wash them all in the next sink, do your scrub-scrub without rinsing then rinse them all in bulk, then final rinse by dipping them into a sink full of hot water with a little bleach.
Then dry them with a clean towel.
That’s how we hand wash when the dishwasher was broken and someone in the house was sick. Because otherwise my husband will wash them with the water running the whole time.
At the very least, unless you have some real stuck on food, there’s no point in leaving soap on the dishes. It’s actually better to rinse them immediately. Soap acts like a magnet that brings oil and water together. That soapy magnet grabs up all the grime and gets rinsed away with water. Leaving dirty soap magnets on your dishes just gives them a chance to dry up and stick back onto the dishes.
It’s certainly not going to dry very much in 30 seconds though
🤣 for whatever reason, my brain read 30 minutes. It seemed a bit excessive.
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If you’re using the dish to prepare raw meat use a disinfectant, otherwise If it looks clean, it’s clean.
If it looks clean it can still be unsanitary.
Agar plates?
Very very tempting
If you’re just looking for presence/absence of live microbes, just use ATP swabs.
Soap. Start with the rough side of the sponge to get the big bits off, then the other side to finish it off. Dry with a clean towel.
Or toss ‘em in the dishwasher.
Start with the rough side of the sponge
periodically microwave the sponge, they are bacteria farms.
Replace with cotton cloths, sponges are also micro plastic farms, and the cotton cloths can be boiled/washed on high and reused.
