Another dish-washing question

[vilakins]

I should have added this to the last post, sorry, but I thought of it a bit late.

This is for people from the UK. Why do you wash dishes in a plastic bowl in the sink rather than directly in the sink? Is it to save water, to keep the sink clean, to be able to toss debris over the side, to protect dishes from hard metal, or for some other reason?

Just so people know my dish-washing habits, I rinse dishes to get loose food off and put them in the dishwasher. I wash delicate glassware (only used for dinner parties or special occasions) in the sink with a microfibre cloth, and pots and pans with a brush which goes through the dishwasher when it needs it. I dry any hand-washed dishes with a tea towel, and no, I don't know why it's called that. "Dish towel", as cited by an American, makes more sense.

The only reason I'm asking about dish washing is because of seeing so many knitted dish cloths on a knitting site and community. It's not normally a subject that exerts any fascination. :-P

Comments

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

I know about that plastic bowl in a sink, I have lived with many families as a tourist, and they used it everywhere. I also know that water is excessively expensive in Britain, especially in the last years. I myself began using the bowl too, of course in anyone else washes up, they don´t.
I discovered the above mentioned advantages myself. Otherwise no one does it here in CR, as far as I know.
I also was taught "tea towel". We call it "utěrka" and it is mostly made of cotton or a mixture of flax and cotton:-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

You mean linen. :-) Linen dries better than cotton, I find, and microfibre is even better.

Perhaps it's the expense of water. We pay for it here too, but I'm not sure how it compares.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

*Nods* Aha, linen, thanks, I thought that this word is used only for bedding:-)
Water in the UK must be horribly expensive, according what I heard, and O was always asked there to be economical with it . We are lucky in our village becuse we have our own communal well, we pay a very reasonable sum. Water is generally more expensive in other places, especially in towns.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Linen is used for bedclothes (which are rarely made of it) and for the material itself, I have linen tea towels, shirts, and trousers. :-)

We don't pay that much for water as we have so much of it. Rain, rain, rain in winter.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

In some areas households now have a water meter and pay for their water according to the amount used, but I think that in most regions there is still a fixed charge regardless of usage. However the areas with metering are increasing over the years.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

We've had water metering for a long time.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Oh come on, you have a fixed charge? That I really didn´t know!
We have water meters in every house, water is under a big company and without a water meter they will not let you take it.But the charge for 1 cubic metre is different in various places. There is a person in our village who has a list of houses and he reads the figures from a water meter dial, and puts them down. You pay according how much water you take. There is quite a similar situation in paying for communal central heating.