Many years ago (5+) I was watching a show with repair people who on ways to save money or things not needed for appliances.
One of the tips was that in most situations, the dishwasher can run on the light load (not normal or heavy load). My dishwasher is OLD (like 20 years), and I only run on the light load. And they are clean. Saves on hot water use. B
I do not rinse dishes before going in. No idea how much this saves me, but thought I’d put it out there.
Random frugal tip for using dishwasher
byu/Individual_Maize6007 inFrugal
Posted by Individual_Maize6007
7 Comments
Technology Connections did a [great video](https://youtu.be/jHP942Livy0?si=IDJmU8-o8pF_tgw9) about how to get the most out of your dishwasher. It’s worth checking out!
Might depend on the model – but good idea either way!
We got our dishwasher a couple of years ago and I do run it as a normal wash. The design has a third tray for cutlery (which is great!) but more importantly, it stores a few litres of water from the final rinse to use as pre-wash for when it is next used.
From memory, our dishwasher uses only 11 litres each wash, but that’s in addition to what was kept from the previous cycle to use for that pre-wash.
We run a full load for one hour, including dry time, and our dishes come out clean.
Also, if you have soft water you only need half the recommended amount of detergent. I switched from pods to powder and my dishes are so much cleaner and don’t smell like soap.
We scrap, not prewash. The drying cycle and extra hot water are off, but turn back on by default after every load and get missed. There doesn’t seem to be a difference in how clean are the dishes. We use Cascade Platinum Plus and Finish JetDry which may help. Those are what are carried by our village store.
My random tip is using Walmart great value brand powder. Works great and cheapest stuff on the market!
I’m looking for a new dishwasher and am actually only looking for one with a “short wash” for that very reason!