When it comes to dishwasher common sense, I wish I had more of it.

A common water-saving tip is to not pre-rinse your dishes prior to putting them into the dishwasher, with the idea that the dishwasher should be able to handle the added gunk.

So I don't (didn't) pre-rinse. But for some reason the dishwasher can't handle the added gunk, and some of the dishes come out. . .gunky.

But I think I found the problem. We don't go through enough dishes.

If we ran the dishwasher every day, then wet foodstuffs wouldn't have a chance to dry out prior to being washed. But we simply do not fill up the dishwasher fast enough to warrant a daily run.

So in our case, the water-saving choice is to pre-rinse, as it takes even more water (and time and aggravation) to scour gunky dishes that come out of the dishwasher then it does to rinse them ahead of time.