paper plates verses the dish washer

[Palooka]

I am trying to figure this out. I pay 2.69 for paper plates at my local grocery. (may last 2 or 3 weeks?) I have no idea how I would do the math, but it seems I would run my dish washer every other day with my family if I didn't buy them.

Our water bill is very cheap here, but I don't know how to figure using the energy for all the extra plates, plus soap, and water.

When you have kids coming and going it's just easy to toss the paper plates instead of stacking the real ones.

Has anyone figured out what is cheaper?

[frugalfranny]

Grainlady has probably figured this out.

Too many variables for me to mess with........cost of water per cu. ft.....how many your machine uses........cost per KWH for elec.....UGH.

I envy you that you have cheap water.........mine is a killer. As my heat bill goes down in the spring......my water bill goes up!

[Palooka]

Not to mention the green part. Yep, Grainlady is a world of wealth on great info!

[Grainlady]

You guys give me WAY too much credit in the math department.... My husband would find that VERY funny!

You are ALL correct about too many UNKNOWN variables to give real numbers, but I'll give this a crack.

For us it is less expensive to wash the dishes (by hand or in a dishwasher) rather than using paper plates because we use "saved" water for doing dishes by hand, and unless it's a hot summer and we have to water the lawn occasionally, we never use our minimum of water that we pay for.

1. What do you do with all your other dishes/silverware? Aren't you already running hot soapy water for after-meal clean-up and for doing dishes that don't go in the dishwasher?

Old dishwashers use 11-15 gallons of water, and newer models 6-10 gallons. But once again, your water use depends on how many cycles you use. Do you use a pre-rinse as well as the longest cycle? Then you use more water than I do using the shortest light cycle on my machine.

2. Using my conservative dishwashing method, we use one gallon of water to do dishes that don't go in the dishwasher, and for after-meal clean-up - three times a day (four times if I'm baking during the day).

We heat 5-cups of "saved" water (catching the cold water running in the pipes before it gets hot for a shower) in an electric kettle, add approx. 5 more cups of cold (saved) water, and rinse the dishes with the remainder of the gallon.

I'm even MORE thrifty, I heat the water in my solar oven (free energy) when possible.

Soap isn't a big cost factor. Most of them can be purchased inexpensively for non-brand name varieties (I just paid $2 for 75-oz/2.12 kg of DW detergent), or with a coupon for namebrand. I taught hubby to use a 1/8 t. measuring spoon for the DAWN dishwashing liquid because he tends to use too much. We don't use more than 1/2 T. DW detergent in the dishwasher - in only one dispenser.

Most people doing dishes by hand will use 5-7 gallons of water to do dishes - compared to our one-gallon method. Heating the water in an electric kettle saves a huge amount of energy it takes to heat water in the hot water heater. An electric kettle is more energy efficient than a kettle on a stove because the water is in direct contact with the heating element and you are only heating the water needed for the task. With a kettle on the stove, you have heat loss to the air around the burner and the kettle has to heat in order for the water to heat - very inefficient....

We run the dishwasher every 4-5-days (the only things we put in the DW are glasses, cups, bowl, plates - no sliverware, plastic, cooking utensils, or pans/cookware). We run our DW on the shortest cycle, which uses around 4-gallons of water (from what I could figure from the user-manual).

The cost of running the DW and doing dishes by hand is in heating the water and the heated drying, not just the water. We never use the heated dry cycle - just air-dry. I don't heat the rinse water, either, just the wash water. I wouldn't use the dishwasher AT ALL except you have to use them to keep them running properly.

[peanut]

Interesting. I would say wash the dishes by hand...with the kids dirtying them. It's a good chance to chat with them and catch up on their day. Good one-on-one time. I wash...they take out of the rinse water and dry...if necessary.

I fill the sink halfway...about 2-3 gallons. One wash sink and one rinse sink. That's 4-6 gallons of water a day. We air dry as much as possible in a rack by the sink.

I only wash dishes once a day though. We only have 2 adults here. Though even with four of us we only washed dishes once a day...unless I was having a baking day.

[frugalfranny]

I wouldn't use the dishwasher AT ALL except you have to use them to keep them running properly.

YES! You do........and I learned this the hard way last year. You need to run it at least once a month I was told, and now do it faithfully. Not just for the dishwasher but the PIPES too.

[joyofsix]

most people doing dishes by hand will use 5-7 gallons of water to do dishes -

I'd have to make a huge effort to use that much water to do dishes. I use a dish pan for washing and rinsing. No dishwasher.

Peanut~ you did mean drying not dirtying right. Though with some kids it could be the same thing.

[Dancing Lotus]

Ok that's way over thinking things for me..

[Siebrie]

Really, AnnK? This is the method of AmyD, who calculated every option to the cent, so that she could really know what the costs were, and then she would make a decision.

[Grainlady]

[QUOTE=joyofsix;1222647]I'd have to make a huge effort to use that much water to do dishes. I use a dish pan for washing and rinsing. QUOTE]

I use a small dish pan too, rather than a jumbo-sized sink. That's how I can manage with just one gallon of water.

[MomToTwoBoys]

What happened to the old fashioned way of doing dishes?

I cut my hand up on Friday and for two days, DH did the dishes for me. He scraped off all of the food, then used a non-abrasive scrubbing pad to clean the rest off. He rinsed the dish to get the residue, then stacked the plate on the counter.

Then after all of that was done, he'd run enough lukewarm water to fill the sink less than halfway. He could go through only one time of having to put soapy water in the sink and then rinse them with cold water.

It honestly made washing dishes incredibly simple. It's all in the preparation to wash them. Even with my stupidly busy schedule, I can get the dishes done a whole lot faster than before.

I refuse to get a dishwasher because that's too pricey, inconvenient and doesn't save me a lot of money. I refuse to use paper plates because that's more waste that's being produced and it's less environmentally unfriendly.

[peanut]

joyofsix: What I meant was get the kids who are dirtying the dishes to help dry the dishes. If they have to do the work to clean them, they might see that they could, after all, use the water cup more than once before putting it in the dirty dishes! Here we used to have coloured plastic cups and you were expected to use the cup all day...unless it had milk or juice in it.

There are other dishes you can do that with. For example if you heat a muffin up on a plate for snack. Honestly...what's going to grow on the plate before the sandwich at lunch? Course, this depends on how sticky a muffin you've got too! But you get the idea.

ETA: We always use our OWN plate or cup again...not someone else's...

[MomToTwoBoys]

joyofsix: What I meant was get the kids who are dirtying the dishes to help dry the dishes. If they have to do the work to clean them, they might see that they could, after all, use the water cup more than once before putting it in the dirty dishes! Here we used to have coloured plastic cups and you were expected to use the cup all day...unless it had milk or juice in it.

There are other dishes you can do that with. For example if you heat a muffin up on a plate for snack. Honestly...what's going to grow on the plate before the sandwich at lunch? Course, this depends on how sticky a muffin you've got too! But you get the idea.

ETA: We always use our OWN plate or cup again...not someone else's...

Omg, DS5 has this tremendous preoccupation with not using the same plate again if it had ANYTHING on it. It doesn't matter what it could be. I end up rinsing the plate off and drying it so that he'll be able to eat a second helping of food. We're slowly working on that with him, but he knows that the one cup per day rule is absolutely essential in the house.

[mommy4ever]

Oh, you would all cringe! I run the dishwasher about 2 times a day.
I have a family of 6, and care for 4 other kids 50 hours a week, and whatever urchins my kids drag in.

I also bake all our treats and about 80% of our food is from scratch. Last night 18 muffins were made(10 left), this morning 4 dozen cookies. Lunch was homemade cream of potato soup. So lots of dishes are created.

That said, we still barely use our minimum. We don't use city water to water the lawn, we have a rain barrel and soaker hoses that get moved around the yard. I have an HE frontload wash machine. I set times for the kids in the showers. I don't believe kids need bathes everyday. When they were little, they used to double or triple up. Not anymore. Now ds15 does need to shower everyday one stinky kid. But he has a timer. Working on the fact that he doens't need to wash his hair every day, rinse well, and wash up. Curly, coarse, dry hair, not good to wash daily.

But yes, I do run it several times a day, and sometimes handwash. Last time is 6pm, whatever doesn't fit in the dishwasher at that point must be washed by hand, as the kitchen in now closed.

[dmarie]

I use paper plates when the kids eat a sandwich or cookies or something of that nature. No reason to dirty a plate. It works for us and helps not doing dishes every day in the dishwasher.