On the dishwasher question, I know some new highly-efficient dishwashers can use as little as 3 gallons for a load of dishes, which seems incredible to me. Google is telling me that an average dishwasher uses 6 gallons per load. So it's tough, though possible, to be more water efficient than a dishwasher. In my area, I pay maybe a cent/gallon, so the water cost isn't very significant. A dishwasher on a good sale might be $300 or $400, but last 10 years, so the dishwasher cost isn't enormous.
Personally, I think the time savings of the dishwasher dwarfs any other consideration, but then I have little kids. If it's just two of you, that might not be quite as important. But assuming you own the house, and might sell it someday, you'll probably want to buy a dishwasher someday, so I'd say might as well do it earlier and benefit from its presence.
