When loading your dishwasher's silverware basket, do you pre-sort the silver (forks with forks, spoons with spoons) or do you randomly place them?

Haha, No. It does not make too much difference when they get sorted anyway. It’s pretty random at my place. It’s probably better random so that things don’t stick together and prevent proper cleaning. All surfaces need to be exposed.

i sort the basket based upon the which of the 2 kitchen drawers they go in: silverware in one and “tools”; knives, spatulas, tongs etc. in the other.

Randomly

I don’t want the spoons to ‘spoon’ so they get put in different sections.

I place soiled silverware in individual locations in the basket. It makes unloading the basket and placing the silverware in the drawer easy. I also group plates in the dishwasher for the same reason.

I put them in randomly.

Randomly for the reason @cazzie stated. I want everything to have spaces between.

Randomly.

Random. Sharp utensils pointed down (for safety when unloading), spoons up or down.

Another follower of @jca @janbb and @cazzie. I just loaded my dishwasher, the big tools go in the upper rack, but the utensils are random to avoid nesting, and also some point down and some point up.

And it really isn’t much difficulty to empty when they’re clean.

I put them in the dishwasher “randomly” if you put forks together or spoons together they’ll have a tendency to nest with each other and only the outside surfaces get clean.

I’ve always heard that randomly is the “right” way, so that like-kind flatware, especially the spoons, won’t nestle together and miss a proper cleaning.

Pre sort
Military axiom; do the worst first

I pre-sort, but then my wife comes along and just dumps handfuls of silverware into the baskets from about three feet up.

@elbanditoroso I mix them up.

I sort, it makes it easier to unload and put away.
I have never, in 3+ decades of sorting, seen a problem with them sticking together or staying dirty.
Just lucky I guess.

Random results in better cleaning (learned that from my cleanliness obsessed mother and real life experience).

Random and I have a separate section in the upper rack for cheapie steak knives. Fancy steak knives get hand-washed put in drying rack beside the kitchen sink (they cost too much to be dulled in dishwasher.)

I sort them, but carefully turn some facing out and some facing in to keep them from sticking.

Neither. I’ve experimented with this, and the method that seems to get things the most clean is to make sure each section of the basket has roughly the same contents (e.g., one knife, two spoons, three forks). This is similar to random, but without the possibility that all the spoons end up in one section by chance.

I place them so they are NOT together, so they don’t nest and block each other from getting washed.

In my current washer, there are cradles that accept and space individual pieces of silverware, and even so, I arrange them to avoid blocking each other, not using all of the slots and using the knife slots that align the knife blades so they don’t block each other nor do the knives shield other pieces from washing.

Pre-sorting is a bad idea, because then the like items can slip into one another preventing a thorough washing.

Wow, have you guys had that problem a lot or are you speculating? All these years later and I’ve never had a spooning or sticking event. Maybe the jets on the dishwashers I’ve had are strong enough to prevent that, I don’t know.

Random. I see the advantage of sorting but I’m way too lazy to do it.

I’m also lazy about loading them up or down. Either way seems to work.

I roughly sort. Like @canidmajor, I’ve never noticed doing so having any effect on the cleanliness of our cutlery.

I have had spooning occur before, yes, leaving visible crud stuck between two nested spoons.

Doesn’t occur with the way I do it now, of course.

I sort to make putting them away easier.

Also note that I don’t expect the dishwasher to actually clean the dishes. I scrub everything in the sink and just use the washer as a big machine that rinses all my dishes at once.

Ours go in at random. I can’t imagine that it takes much longer to put them away than if they were segregated.

I need to clarify my answer a bit. The silverware goes in one half of the 8 section basket roughly randomly. The other half of the basket gets the tools. “Tools” and silverware go in separate drawers on opposite sides of my refrigerator. That pre-sort helps when I put things away. I pick up the basket, walk to one drawer and empty that half of the basket. Then I go to the other side of the refrigerator and empty the remaining half.
I really should have both drawer next to each other but this system leaves the cooking tools near the cooking area and the silverware near the table.

This is definitely a first world problem. :-)

@LuckyGuy, No, Sweetie, I’m pretty sure that’s a super-efficient engineer problem!” ;-)

I have a feel I may be starting to date a super-efficient engineer. We’ll see.

@canidmajor I wouldn’t say that I’ve had the problem a lot. But I had it a couple of times, and that was enough to make me start experimenting. What I do now doesn’t really take a whole lot of effort, and it’s never caused any problems.

Randomly, as I feel they clean up better in a mixed group.

Pre-sorting isn’t required for any modern, technically advanced machine.

@SecondHandStoke Unfortunately, not all of us have such luxuries.