You just finished a delicious dinner and you actually offer to help clean up.  You want your dishes to be really clean, so you rinse them before you put them in the dishwasher—right thing to do?  Not so fast. 

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While it may seem counter intuitive, there are at least 4 reasons to stop rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher:

• Your dishes need to be dirty for the detergent to do its job. The makers of the dish detergent Cascade discourage customers from pre-washing or rinsing dishes because it actually inhibits the cleaner from working. "Enzymes in Cascade detergent are designed to attach themselves to food particles," the Wall Street Journal reports. Without food, the enzymes have nothing to latch onto.

• You won't get your dishes any cleaner by pre-rinsing. Today's new-fangled dishwashers are more savvy than what grandma might have owned. They have advanced sprayer technology and sensors that detect how dirty your dishes are.

• Pre-rinsing or washing dishes by hand wastes water and electricity. You waste 6,000 gallons per year if you insist on pre-rinsing, Consumer Reports says.

• It's a needless time suck, especially when yo have so many other things to do.

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