Been there; done that. And once I bought a dishwasher, I lost all motivation to do it by hand.

Scraping off stuck stuff, the whole process of cleaning the sink, plugging it and filling it with water, sorting dishes by category (do the glasses first! Pots last!), running out of room to put the dry dishes so dry hands and put some away, then back to washing.

Its not unpleasant, but just lots of work and the dishwasher does a decent job with 60 seconds of effort (put dry clean dishes away; rack dirty dishes, push a button). I do it before leaving for work.

Of course, now with the energy-star hoax I'm starting to regret buying a new dishwasher, but that's another discussion.