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Pull Truly Dry Dishes From the Dishwasher With This Simple Trick

No more drip marks or unsightly water stains. This impossibly simple maneuver ensures bone-dry dishes after every wash.

Headshot of David Watsky
Headshot of David Watsky
David Watsky Managing Editor / Home and Kitchen
David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.
Expertise Kitchen tools | Appliances | Food science | Subscriptions | Meal kits
David Watsky
2 min read
The inside of a dishwasher, including the racks.

Open your dishwasher door to save time and electricity.

 James Martin/CNET

A dishwasher's main function is to clean your plates, bowls, glasses and silverware, but it wouldn't hurt for those clean dishes to come out dry so you don't have to hand-dry them or live with unsightly drip marks and water stains. If you think there's no answer for subtly moist or downright sopping dishes after a dishwasher cycle, think again. 

And I'm not talking about the heated self-drying mode that modern dishwashers are equipped with. In fact, you can skip that cycle altogether and save a little on your monthly energy bill with this analog solution to an age-old problem. We've got a better, faster, more eco-friendly way to ensure dry dishes after every wash.

Best Dishwashers for 2024 See at Cnet
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For more tips, here's how to properly defrost your freezer and 7 things you should never plug into an extension cord.

How to quickly dry your dishes

To flash dry your dishes, all you need to do is open the door to the dishwasher as soon as the final rinse cycle is done and the unit has drained. The hot dishes will evaporate the water and the steam will escape through the open door. Shazam! Dry dishes.

Generally, flash drying only takes a couple of minutes with most dishwashers. It can take up to 10 minutes max to fully dry your dishes, though, with some models. It just depends on how hot the dishes are. 

Don't forget to set a reminder

If you're like me, you'll forget to open the dishwasher, even when it beeps that it's finished. So, set an alarm on your phone -- or have your home assistant like Alexa or Google Home set an alarm -- to remind you. Two things buzzing at you at once should do the trick.

For more, here's how to get rid of junk mail. Also, you've been using your can opener wrong this entire time.