[vector_spaces]

I'm always rubbed the wrong way by folks showing up with a "well, actually" over this point about dishwashers because this advice only holds in general if you're using a recent model, which not everyone can afford -- in fact, probably most people can't, so it becomes a question of accessibility. True, it would reduce your costs over the long run to use something more efficient -- but one of the insidious realities of being poor is that you can't afford to think long-term. If it's between paying my rent this month, and maybe saving an extra $15/month over the long term, sorry, but I'm going to make sure there's a roof over my head.

So if you're like me and have always lived in rentals with older model dishwashers for much of your life, and find yourself going crazy reading advice like this all over the internet despite making sure the filter trap is clean and taking full advantage of dishwasher pre-rinse cycles and even adjusting the temperature on your water heater and experimenting with different detergents, don't feel too bad -- dishwashers become less efficient over time for the most part, and hand-rinsing beforehand becomes a necessity. So go ahead and hand-rinse beforehand if you need to. It's not an anti-pattern unless you have a newer model.

[sorokod]

>one of the insidious realities of being poor is that you can't afford to think long-term

aka Sam Vimes "Boots" theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

[dragonwriter]

Even with a fairly recent model I’ve occasionally had food debris from un-pre-rinsed dishes redeposited (and firmly so, with a heated dry cycle) on other dishes.

[badtension]

I've been washing dishes by hand my whole life and just recently got a dishwasher. When washing by hand pre-rinsing and soaking is essential so I kept doing that even after getting the machine, only recently discovering that I am wasting water this way.

Thanks for the tip about the old dishwashers.

[wizofaus]

Soaking is definitely necessary for many sorts of baked-on food remnants. But rinsing is mostly unnecessary unless you're expecting to leave the dishes in the machine long enough before running it that food particles dry out and get stuck - in that case just run a quick rinse cycle, it'll almost certainly use less water than doing it by hand