Dishes, meet Mr. Soap. Mr. Soap, these are the dishes.

Soap is merely a dish-washing accessory. Hands up all who believe this to be true. If you think that water is a great dish cleaner on its own, you failed an important part in Chemistry. To begin, some definitions:

Hydrophilic:

(literal) water loving (water soluble)

Hydrophobic:

(lit.) water fearing (water insoluble)

Fats (lipids) are hydrophobic. This is because the ratio of hydrogen to oxygen present makes them non-polar, and they can only be dissolved in a non-polar solvent - eg. soap. Therefore, foods that contain large amounts of fats - eg. butter, eggs, bacon etc. - are not dissolved by water (a polar solvent). No matter how hot that water is, it will not change the essential chemical composition of those lipids.

For those of you whose eyes crossed in the last paragraph, I apologize. I just wanted to make sure that it was understood that there is a very strong scientific basis for my insistence that soap must be used to make dishes clean. I have not been brainwashed by detergent ads on television - though the one where the soap dropped into the greasy water chases away the oils is pretty convincing - and I am not trying to sell any soap products. Heck, I'll give you some soap for free* if you will use it to clean dishes properly. To sum it all up, if I can draw pictures in the left-over grease on a casserole dish, it should not be in the clean dish rack!

Aside from the hygiene and ick factor of water "washed" dishes (which are pretty strong arguments, IMHO), they just look grubby after a while. An example is 2 identical saucepans, one of which spends much time in the dishwasher or being happily and sudsily scrubbed by myself (okay there is no happiness there, I hate washing dishes but it sounded better, and maybe the saucepan likes the suds), and the other that gets rinsed out and scrubbed with hot water and a brush. One of these saucepans is incredibly shiny, the other has a dull, grubby-looking finish. It may be only anecdotal evidence, but it just serves to reinforce my pro-soap stance.

A possible explanation for the lack of detergent usage is that the non-user is trying to provoke me to do all the dishes by doing theirs badly. This is not the case. They seem quite content to "wash" their dishes themselves. If we had completely separate dishes, I would be icked-out, but be able to chalk it up to mere eccentricity and bad judgement. But since I have to eat from the same dishes, I have a vested interest in their cleanliness. I always do a spot check when I pull something out of the cupboard, and if in any doubt, I wash it again before using it.

How does one convince a non-user to come away from the dark side? I have tried saying, "You have to use soap to get that clean", which was met by a close eye inspection of the offending dish and a grudging sluice with some sudsy water. I have tried teaching by demonstration, blatantly using soap when I wash my dishes and trying to make it look fun. I have even provided a large costco-sized container of dish detergent to be used by the household. What more can be done? I have no idea, but until then, I will continue to move "clean" dishes from the dish rack straight into the dishwasher.