Wash your dishes smart, not hard: 6 kitchen tips everyone should know

Cooking more during the coronavirus quarantine means you’re sure to be generating more dishes than ever before, too. In our house, it feels like the dirty dishes regenerate every time I clear out the sink. Turn around to put away the cereal and — POW! — more dishes. Where do they come from? I didn’t even know we still had those bowls.

Maybe it’s because the utility bill is sure to rise while we hang out at home. Maybe it’s because I get sick of scrubbing stuck-on gunk, but washing my mountain of dishes more efficiently has been top of mind lately. And so, I wanted to share some top tips for getting dishes clean without doing quite as much work.

Use a dishwasher as often as you can

If you’re running the dishwasher more often during lockdown, don’t fret it. It may be tempting to think that handwashing dishes after meals and snacks is the easier, faster and more conserving way to go, but you might be surprised.

According to the EPA and a 2016 study by the Water Research Foundation, the average dishwasher uses about 6 gallons per load, while older models can use up to 10 gallons. An Energy Star-certified dishwasher can use as few as 3 gallons per load, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Pair that with the fact that your kitchen faucet probably uses around two gallons per minute, and unless you can get your dishes washed in five minutes or less, a dishwasher just makes sense as the most efficient way to clean dishes. Of course, not every home has a dishwasher. If you’re washing dishes by hand, keep reading. There are other ways you can make life easier after meals. 

Let dirty dishes soak

Gross, but effective. After loading the dishwasher, you can let your hand wash items soak rather than spend minutes (and gallons of water) washing them over and over under the running faucet. You can soak them one at a time, or fill the sink a little and let them marinate. You don’t need a full sink to soak dishes effectively.

The best way to do this is to lather all your dishes at once. Then, plug the sink and run some hot water over all of them. Turn the faucet back on only when you’re ready to rinse everything. Your dishes do need clean water to be sanitary, but soaking them all together in a few centimeters of dishwater isn’t a health risk as long as you soap and rinse well at the end. 

Organize your sink

If you are going to soak dishes, there should be a method to your madness. Yes, even dishwashing can benefit from some planning and strategy. It might sound odd, but stacking and nesting dishes inside one another is one way to save water.

You’ll soak everything without filling each bowl up with its own water. While you won’t want a stack of dishes to sit in your sink for days on end, nesting them is a good way to make the work go faster — and use less water, too. 

For example, the hot soap and water surrounding the forks and small dishes sitting inside a larger bowl will begin dissolving bits of stuck-on food, which will make it that much easier to clean.  

Ditch the disposal

In-sink garbage disposals are an easy way to get rid of gunk, but they also require running water to safely operate and more of your time as you listen for the last sounds of food being mulched. Try this instead: scrape your food into the trash or a compost receptacle rather than the garbage disposal.

It’s faster, and you avoid forgetting which food items should never be put down a disposal, like bones and fruit pits. Scraping food into the trash will keep you from unintentionally harming your sink’s disposal system or clogging your drain.   

Swap your sponge for a pot scraper

If you hate soaking and scrubbing dishes, you’re not alone. CNET Executive Editor Rich Brown recently sang the praises of one tiny kitchen tool, a $5 pot scraper that does the heavy lifting. It’s a cheap, handy piece of plastic that can tackle stuck-on food and keep you from needing to soak a dirty, burnt lasagna water for hours on end, which takes up counter or sink space and looks unappetizing. 

The pot scraper’s hard (often silicone) edge and angled surfaces give you more leverage when it comes to taking crud off those pans. 

You can also use it as a generalized scraper after meals. Just scrape food off each plate before you put it under the faucet. Do this before the food has a chance to dry onto the plate. The more work you get done before you need to lather and rinse, the better. 

Soap and shake

It’s not the latest Tiktok craze, it’s a method of washing your dishes that could saves you annoying cleaning time. Simply add soap and hot water to any containers you’re washing, snap on the lids and shake them periodically. Think of it as the lazy person’s dishwasher for your mason jars. 

You’ll only put water in the containers once, and agitating the soap every so often will get every inch clean — or at least cleaner than you otherwise would. After getting out most of the peanut butter or oil, stick it in the dishwasher as you normally would. This really only works with items that have a lid, so don’t go spinning suds around your kitchen from an empty bowl. 

If you’re interested in more kitchen and home water hacks, you can find tips online for everything from how to make your own distilled water to how to make a simple sprinkler system and ways to get started with composting.