Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. There was a mysterious box in the kitchen of my suburban Colorado childhood home. It was rumored to wash dishes, but I ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The method, also known as “washing up,” involves hand-washing dishes with soapy water before transferring them to a drying rack.

Let’s say that somebody in your family has been sick. To make sure those germs are gone, would it be better to scrub your dishes by hand or put them in the dishwasher? If you used water from the ...