Viral TikTok Has Folks in Awe of How British People Wash Their Dishes

In September 2024, a TikTok user named @spiritual_af posted a video in which she asked people who live in the U.K. to please explain how they wash their dishes.

"Can you show the steps that you take, to take a dish from dirty to clean, please? Because I just went down a very strange rabbit hole ... and I want confirmation or denial," she said into the camera.

Naturally, this got a lot of folks curious as to what rabbit hole she fell down, and why she was asking about how Brits wash their dishes. The video racked up more than 12 million views, so obviously the topic got people talking.

On that note ... how do they wash their dishes?

According to the comments under @spiritual_af's video, it sounds like there are folks in the U.K. who opt to wash their dishes by letting them soak in hot, soapy water, then scrubbing them, and then letting the dishes dry — without rinsing the soapy bubbles off.

But not everyone agreed that this was true, with many users on the app saying that they lived in the U.K. and always rinse their soap off their plates. "No, we rinse," one U.K. user countered, while another wrote, "Don’t tar us all with the same brush … the majority of us rinse!"

In an undated post on The Guardian's Notes & Queries section, a reader from Derby, U.K., named Elizabeth wrote: "I cannot understand the British habit of washing and rinsing dishes in the same dirty water, and drying them without washing off the soap suds. Is this similar to having a bath and not rinsing off the soap? Am I missing something?"

Another reader named Todd, who hailed from Leeds, U.K., answered: "The trick is to keep the water clean, by pre-rinsing and -scraping and then by washing the cleanest things first (after the glassware of course). Soapy water will run off without leaving marks, whereas you will get watermarks if you rinse. Washing under a continuous stream of water makes it harder to apply detergent and is probably wasteful of both it and hot water, but the real reason we British don't do it that way is that traditionally we have not had mixer taps."

Under @spiritual_af's video, one user wrote, "I will never ever understand the confusion about this. I have never rinsed dishes and my food has never tasted soapy, any remaining suds just drip off the dishes like the water does." Someone else responded jokingly that any soap that stays on the dishes is "to make up for the lack of flavor 😭😭😭."

"I can't speak for all of us in the U.K. but the reason I don't rinse the dish after washing it is cus I'm on a water metre and I'm being charged for every drop of water I use 😳😅 the soap slides off anyway," someone else explained.

Another user wrote: "I am 63. I've never rinsed the dishes. I'm not dead."