10 tips for washing dishes quickly — and greenly — from Green Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck
Water is an infinitely precious yet finite resource. Just ask anyone whose water comes from a private well or who has lived through a drought. There was a severe drought while I was growing up in California. We all learned to wash using a minimum of water and consequently less soap. “Drought washing” is much easier on the environment than the water-wasteful kinds, and I think it is far less disgusting than washing dishes in a sinkful of greasy, scummy water.
The Hand Washing Technique
The perfect sink for hand dishwashing has a big, deep, single bowl and built-in drain boards on both sides. Most double sinks are annoyingly small and cannot accommodate large roasting pans or long-handled skillets.
The perfect hands for manual dishwashing are clad in rubber gloves.
1. Keep greasy pots and pans away from dishes. Greasy dishes are much harder to wash than nongreasy ones, and why make more work for yourself? You can put hot water and dish soap in the greasy pots and pans and let them soak on the stove until you’re ready to tackle them.
Filling a sink with soapy water to wash dishes is wasteful as well as inefficient. Not all the dishes used at a meal will be equally dirty, but if they soak in a sink together, the dirty dishes get a little cleaner, while the nearly clean dishes get a lot dirtier.
If your water is really hard, letting the dishes soak in the sink can get truly disgusting. A sink full of mineral-laden water, dishes, and dish soap can congeal overnight into a sink full of greasy, gelatinous scum.
2. To remove a hardened, burned-on crust from a pot or pan, fill it with a solution of 2 tablespoons baking soda per quart of water and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and let the pan cool. The carbonized crust will lift right off.
To clean burned crust out of a large roasting pan or glass baking dish that cannot be heated on top of the stove, pour in the baking soda solution and heat the pan in a 350 degree oven. When the water begins to steam, turn off and let the pan cool.
3. If you have somewhere to stack your dirty dishes other than in the sink, do so.
4. Scrub your sink with a clean, soapy dishrag.
5. Put all your dirty cutlery in the sink, run hot water on the dishcloth, then squirt some dish soap (preferably organic) on the dishcloth.
6. Scrub the cutlery pieces and stack them in a corner of the sink or in a rinse basket. When all the cutlery is scrubbed, rinse it with hot tap water and put it in the dish drying rack. (Researchers who have studied these things have concluded that air-dried dishes are far more sanitary than dishes that have been dried with a towel. Air-drying is also, perhaps not coincidentally, less work.)
7. Next, start washing dishes, taking them off the counter, or wherever they are stacked; wash them with a soapy dishcloth, and stack them in the sink.
8. When your sudsy stack reaches the top of the sink or you’ve washed all the dishes (whichever comes first), rinse the dishes with hot water and put them in the dish drainer.
9. After the dishes are clean, wash the glasses and stack them in the sink. Rinse them off and put them in the dish drainer.
10. After you have washed all the dishes, you can start washing the pots and pans. They have been soaking awhile by this time, and should be a little easier to tackle.
About the Author
Ellen Sandbeck, the author of Green Housekeeping (Copyright © 2006 by Ellen Sandbeck) and Green Barbarians, is an organic landscaper, worm wrangler, writer, and graphic artist who lives with (and experiments on) her husband and an assortment of younger creatures — which includes two mostly grown children, a couple of dogs, a small flock of laying hens, and many thousands of composting worms — in Duluth, Minnesota.
MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHOR
- 11 Tips for Dealing With Your Piles of Papers
- First, Get Rid of the Clutter! Organizing with Everyday Objects
- Home, Sweet-Smelling Home: 14 Easy Tips
- How to Disinfect Your Home — Naturally
- To Rinse or Not to Rinse? The Eternal Dishwasher Question
Learn More
- Read the Introduction to Green Housekeeping
- See the book’s Table of Contents
- Learn more about the author
- Read the Introduction to Green Barbarians: Live Bravely on Your Home Planet also by Ellen Sandbeck
