Ask HN: What is your system for dirty dishes?

* First, get every dish wet (so that the food will rinse off easier), just a quick splash of water the surface of every dish.

* Then, soap your sponge and begin cleaning. Stack all dishes off to the side sensibly (plates on bottom, bowls on top, silverware atop that). Don't put your sponge down to rinse off anything.

* After you soap and stack eveything, begin rinsing.

* Put the entire stack (or half of it) under the faucet. The running water from the top will flow down to the bottom, making it easier and faster to wash each subsequent dish.

* Run your hands through each dish as you rinse with water to detect and remove any remaining food.

Finally you are done! This method is great because it reduces redundant action (putting down, picking up sponge) and because it "compounds" others (lets the same water rinse multiple dishes). Also, always remember to wash dishes when you have downtime while cooking - you will have no "prep dishes" to clean by the time you eat, and instead only eating dishes.

Have 2 dishwashers. Make sure all the dishes and cutlery you own fits in them. Fill one dishwasher with the dirty dishes, turn it on and onces its done, just leave the clean dishes in there, thats where they live now, thats the storage solution for them. As you use the clean dishes, load them into the other dishwasher until done, repeat the cycle.

This does scream like a solution from a single guy with too much money, but honestly, i'd do it if my kitchen wasn't tiny.

  - Stuff on the counter? Yuck! Dishes to the sink, bottles to their homes.
  - Dirty dishes in the sink? Yuck! Load them into the dishwasher.
  - Clean dishes in the dishwasher? Oh no! Put them all away.
  - Dishwasher getting full? Yuck! Start it running.
  - Crumbs or grunge on the counter? Yuck! Wipe it down.
  - Crumbs on the floor? Yuck! Sweep it all up.
  - Trash can nearly full? Gross! Empty it.

An outside observer might think I had regular, schedule-driven habits around kitchen cleaning, but it doesn't feel that way; I don't intentionally empty the clean dishes from the dishwasher every morning, that just happens as a consequence of making coffee.

This is a pretty standard algorithm, I suppose. What is somewhat unusual, I guess, is that, occasionally, I use the dishwasher to wash small appliances like a rice cooker, an electric kettle, or a water filter pitcher. It probably shortens their lifespan but I think it's worth the saved time.

What to do if you're not one of them?

I created my personal ritual: all the dishes land in the sink during the day, and right before going to sleep I turn on an audio book and spend the next ~20 mins calmly doing my home stuff. Loading the dishwasher (and unloading yesterday's portion), preparing food containers for pets, etc. Everything that's quiet enough not to wake up everyone in the house.

Miele Model 6875 (now discontinued):

https://www.designerappliances.com/miele-g6875scvisf.html

We don't use it for knives, pots, or non-dishwasher-safe items. For those items, I wash them by hand. For years I have used this scrubbing cloth:

Crown Choice All-Purpose Cleaning Scrubber

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YP16LK9?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_...

That scrubbing cloth is great because it dries out quickly, never gets smelly, does not scratch anything even if you scrub hard, and lasts a very long time (at least 6 months of daily use, but probably a year or more).

For gummy stuff, I usually use a dish brush before the cloth to knock the gunk off of the dish so that I don't have to later clean it off of the cloth. I've never found one that I like well enough, so I won't post a link.

For stuck-on stuff, I use a Progressive scraper:

https://www.amazon.com/Progressive-GT-3300-Gadget-Scrapers-D...

Those are sold out, but these look similar:

https://www.amazon.com/Multicolor-Silicone-Dishwashing-Multi...

Parenthetically, I rinse and load the dirty dishes as soon as they are used. You'll read a lot stuff about no rinsing. Some people have taken it to religious zeal. You will ignore that nonsense and do at least one rinse. You'll use less detergent, extend the life of your dishwasher and your drain pipes. Use the powdered detergent and use less than the recommended amount. Don't use the heat-dry cycle, crack your dish washer door with a wooden spoon after the wash is done, the residual heat will dry the dishes without using additional energy.

Make your bed every morning also.

I'm also kind of anal about everything being very dry before going into the cupboards.

Debated getting a small radiant heater to install under a cupboard over a drying rack but figured it was going too far.

So about ten years ago then industry quietly removed phosphates and the appliance manufacturers had a golden era of appliance purchases as everyone thought their machines weren't working right anymore. I was one of the buyers who contributed.

In frustration that my new dishwasher didn’t work either I did some reading and learned the above. I now add a tablespoon or two to my dishes and laundry. I don’t pre-wash my dishes, no matter how hard and dry. You don’t need to. It works great, everything comes out super clean. You can buy it online.

The proper cleaning process usually takes place in the morning for all the stuff that accumulated from the day before, but it's all already mostly clean, so is again fairly quick and painless.

Four or five decades ago, I was very 'agin' dishwashers because of the pretty poor ones used at my boarding school. We often had egg stains on plates for a day or two after an egg meal.

I was at a friend's place and I claimed that the plates and utensils we'd used for our morning eggs would leave traces after a wash cycle. I had to eat my words, those dishes and forks were spotless.

We've had a dishwasher ever since. They do a much better and less labor-intensive job than hand-washing. There's no need to rinse your dishes before using the dishwasher, that's why there is a pre-wash rinse as part of the overall wash cycle. Doing that rinse yourself is redundant and a waste of your time.

Especially sweaty gym laundry for the runners.

Set the dishwasher to clean (even if not full - we don’t care). Unload before we eat the next day.

It’s pretty simple and took maybe a minute.

Nowadays, I sometimes have to do two loads cause dishwasher is tiny and can barely fit one pan. So, I’ll do the plates first and the pan in another load. Still much faster than me cleaning by hand. Cleaning those pots and pans is annoying. Same for cleaning woks. Dishwasher does an amazing job.

And yes - we’ve been very happy with the dishwasher. Literally is a blessing. We had a Bosch 800 series.

The advantage of this system is that there is never a large build up of dishes to do (since I hardly own any).

Now, I have a dishwasher, and I just put dishes in the dishwasher as soon as I use it.

Remote start via app makes zero sense without auto dosing.

What do people do instead of using these? I'm guess just hand drying them. I do have a lot of air-tight container lids that are super annoying to hand dry.

I like the convenience of the drying rack, but hate the countertop clutter and space it takes.

Tools:

1 spray bottle - half dish soap, half water.

1 cup

1 scrubber

The spray bottle is for incidental dishes. By spraying a tiny bit of liquid onto whatever dish you just used, you wash faster while also using less water and soap. Often, you don't even need to get your hands wet. There's no fumbling with slippery dish soap bottles and caps, and no glugs of soap wasted. Try not to inhale the mist though.

The cup is for larger loads. Put a squirt of dish soap in it, then fill with hot / boiled water. Dunk your scrubber into the cup to reload it with hot soapy water whenever necessary.

Some advantages of this: Your sink is kept free - no stoppers needed, or sinks of greasy water with gross food bits in. Also, only a cup or so of water needs to be boiled. The whole process is faster, with less effort.

As others have mentioned, doing dishes immediately is the all around best way to go. The cup and spray bottle really minimize the friction involved in keeping that up throughout the day.

We do them during the day.

We sometimes run it over night on the eco setting (or if we otherwise have four hours to spare), but mostly we use the quick power wash setting, which cleans the dishes in roughly one hour.

When we're home (on the weekends), we run the dishwasher multiple times a day.