Q & A on Washing Dishes By Hand

QUESTION: I hope you don't think this is a silly question, but exactly how did you wash your dishes? Did you fill up a sink of soap water and wash them all from that and then rinse them all off at the same time? I'm just curious as I've been using a dishwasher for a long time.


ANSWER:It's not a silly question at all. When I shared with my beloved that I only used 2. something gallons of water to wash the dishes, after being impressed, his first question was, "how did you know it was under 3 gallons." ;0) "I measured it," was my answer. My poor beloved I think is getting used to the wackiness in our house. The only reason I measured it was because I wanted to know if I was really saving water by washing dishes without the dishwasher. I filled up the sink with a gallon of water. It didn't look like a lot. I was a little disappointed. I said, well, let me try it out. I put some of the dishes in the little bit of water. I washed the dishes and put them to the side. I then grabbed the next amount of dishes and put them in the little bit of water, and washed them and put them to the side. ;0) I repeated this a total of three times. I have two sinks, but it's not necessary. Once that was done it was time to rinse. I didn't want to just fill up the other sink to rinse the dishes in a little bit of water, as I felt that once the first one or two dishes were rinsed, the water would be soapy. ;0) So I put the stopper in the sink and I put the a little bit of water to run out of the faucet. I knew where a gallon of water got up to. Anyway, I put all of my soapy dishes in the sink and rinsed them off with the little water coming out of the faucet. To be specific, I grabbed a cup in each hand. I rinsed one, and with any water that was in the cup that I was rinsing, I would pour it over the next one that I was rinsing, to speed it up. lol I did that quickly. I did keep rinsing even though I knew it had passed the one gallon mark. Out of curiosity, I grabbed my huge blender which has cup markings on it, and measure out my rinse water. It came out to 1 gallon and about 3 or 4 cups. So I used a gallon to wash, and a gallon and few cups to rinse. I used a little more water to wipe the counters, ledge, and sinks down, so I just rounded it up to 3 gallons, but I don't even think it passed 2 1/2 gallons.

Maria S. left me a comment yesterday about wastewater. (thanks Maria) I am writing a post about that for today. I hope you come back to read that, as that might save even more money.