What I was doing wrong

Sometimes we make life harder for ourselves. When our lives involve lots of cleaning, this isn't hard. Sometimes it's in the name of fun for the kids, sometimes it's out of lack of willpower, but often it's out of our control. I've recently discovered that I've been making my life harder for no good reason at all! Since I've been married I've experienced every dishwasher situation from a fabulous cleaning machine to no dishwasher at all. Our house previous to this one had the most horrible dishwasher ever. We rented there for 3 years and used the dishwasher solely as a sanitizer. The dishes had to be SPOTLESS to go in, and then you had to be certain to run the disposal before you started it. Ever since this experience, I've been very leery about trusting any dishwasher. We've been in this house almost 3 years, and even though the dishwasher was upgraded and brand new, I've washed every dish before it went in. Finally, my friend Becca challenged me to just throw everything in- as is! I started doing it and it worked! Even dinner party dishes that sat over night! I lightly rinsed off the big chunks and threw them in with whatever was crusted on. I used the heavy setting and voila, sparkling clean dishes! The only problem I've had is with the silverware- they're on the door and don't get blasted as thoroughly. What a time saver it is not to wash my dishes before the dishwasher does! So now I'm looking for other things I may be overdoing. Not to cut corners, just to clean smarter.