Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
My mother and grandmother (midwesterners both) filled up the divided sink with water. Soapy water on the left, rinse water on the right.

I started out doing dishes that way, too, but then I thought, If I want to save water, lets find out how much I use. So I washed a set of dishes with the water running into an empty but plugged sink, and found that the amount I used didn't fill the sink. So, filling the sinks uses more water than letting it run from the tap over the dishes.

This validates your method, @aster.
Well, this depends on the speed of the cleaner and the... how much water you let running. Sorry, my english doesn't cover chores much, lol.
And not everyone fills the whole sink. We would put a little soapy water in the sink to start and turn on and off the running water to rinse so the water level would go up, cleaning smaller dishes first and moving on to the bigger and dirtier stuff when I was a kid. Likely to add soap on the way.