If you wait to fill the dishwasher with its routine contents before running it, this is supposed to save the most detergent & water. Now if you have at least t

If you wait to fill the dishwasher with its routine contents before running it, this is supposed to save the most detergent & water. Now if you have at least two of every item that could be likely to be "in the dishwasher" at any one time, it would be ideal to also have maybe another whole dishwaher's load of cabinets & storage space to put it in. That way you will actually have enough extra space to store basically two full loads of duplicate kitchenware when the dishwasher itself is truly empty. You've got to have all these duplicate items and handy space and it barely cuts the odds in half that the item you want is going to still be in the dishwasher anyway. At least that's how it works in the chemistry laboratory. And if it needs to be analytically clean it's possible to make the data more meaningful by hand-washing the high-stakes items.