You Usually Don’t Need to Pre-Rinse Your Dishes

You usually don’t need to rinse your dishes before loading the dishwasher.

Many dishwasher detergents contain enzymes that bind to and break down food residue, so rinsing first is just kind of unnecessary. And even worse, some dishwashers use the dirt in the water to measure how dirty the dishes are and decide how hard to wash. So if you rinse everything first, you might actually make the machine do less than the dishes need.

So scrape off the big pieces, but otherwise let the dishwasher do its job.