As I put a dish into the dishwasher I thought to myself, “🤔 I haven’t cleaned the filter in a while.” So I took it out and gave it a real good blast with piping hot water from the kitchen sink. I even scraped some of the gunk off with a dish brush to the point where I couldn’t find a single mote of gunk upon careful examination.
Then I proceeded to refill the rinse aid (even though it wasn’t empty) and–as usual–spilled that stuff all over the interior door in the process. Is it even possible to not spill the rinse aid when refilling it? 🤔
My journey didn’t end there, however! I then proceeded to walk the entirety of my home searching for cups and plates that may have been left behind by my children, found several, and it was enough that it nearly filled the dishwasher racks; bottom and top.
The dishwasher has been started; the wait begins.
As a rule of thumb, it’s good to clean that filter roughly every month. Since you’re using rinse aid, I recommend just cleaning the filter every time you top that off. To minimize how much the filter catches, give dishes a little rinse before loading to at least knock off the bigger stuff.
There are a few things that most people don’t know to do for optimal dishwasher effectiveness:
- Don’t use pods. Ideally use dry detergent, but liquid is good too. You have no control over pods.
- Don’t cram it full. Give everything space and have it all face down and/or toward the center where the jets of water will come from.
- Don’t put big shit in there that will block the spinning arms from spinning.
- Put a little detergent on the detergent door for a little assistance in the rinse cycle.
- You probably don’t need to fill the detergent door (unless you’re doing a heavy load of stubborn shit), and overdosing the detergent could be contributing to cloudiness on your dishes. Obviously, close the detergent lid. If not, you’re throwing all of your detergent away in the initial rinse cycle.
- Run hot water through your kitchen sink until it feels hot before you start your dishwasher. Your machine doesn’t use much water, so it might just grab cold water from the pipes instead of hot water from your water heater if you don’t do this. And everybody knows that hot water is better for cleaning most things.
- The dishwasher takes like 3-4 goddamn hours to run, but it uses way less water and soap than if you handwashed that shit yourself, plus it can run while you work or sleep.
- Most things can go in the dishwasher. The only stuff I don’t run through there are knives, my cast iron cookware (including Dutch ovens because they’re just cast iron coated in enamel), and things that explicitly say that they’re not dishwasher safe.
Follow those simple steps and your dishwasher will work better and you’ll feel like you reclaimed a bunch of time compared to handwashing or rerunning the dishwasher.
One of your bullet items is (slightly) wrong: If your dishwasher was designed to use pods then you should use pods. That’s what the engineers engineered the thing to use and yes, it makes a difference.
Also, another tip: Manually spin the arms before starting the dishwasher. It’ll immediately reveal if anything will block the arm from spinning 👍
I have never seen a dishwasher that doesn’t heat its own water, and I have seen many. Is that a thing?
They have an element for the dry cycle and often want water hotter than they will get from the tap so the ones I’ve seen heat their own water. Running the hot tap first wouldn’t help in that case.
I don’t think that changes anything. You still want to start from hot water so it has less work to do heating it.
Then again, my water heater is in the basement right under the kitchen so water gets hot fast, and I don’t bother
The reason I always heard was that it’s generally more cost effective to let your water heater supply hot water than to rely on the heating element in the washer. Most US dishwashers are plumbed to the hot water, so you’re already paying to heat that water, may as well let it make it to the dishwasher instead of just cooling off in the pipes.
It also makes the initial rinse cycle that much more effective.
I doubt it adds up to appreciable cost savings, but it’s just part of the routine at this point.
My dishwasher (and every dishwasher I’ve had or seen) is not even connected to the hot water.
Does it have a dry cycle still? If you are putting in an element you might as well heat the water with it.
The generation that raised you will say “yeah, duh, it’s common sense” without a hint of introspection to realize that it was their job to teach you this kind of shit.
Between the Technology Connections channel on YouTube just being legitimately interesting and having just bought a house, I’m speedrunning a lot of information about DIY maintenance to mitigate the disasters. When it comes to knowing how your water heater works or where your main water valve is, better late than never. Routine stuff like cleaning your dishwasher filter and running the machine properly will have immediately recognizable effects that greatly benefit your life. And unlike other people who you’ve heard shit like that from, I’m not selling anything lol.
I don’t use tablets. Powder is cheaper. You only need about 11g of detergent for lightly soiled loads. Tablets are typically 20g. To get a visual reference for the volume 11g of powder represents, I weighed it out in a cup then tipped the cup into a tablespoon.
You can also pull off the spray arms and clean them out. I dug out a pebble and several little balls of plastic wrap from mine, I think it works noticeably better.
I rinse everything thoroughly before putting in in the dishwasher to avoid ever having to clean the filter. I check it a couple of times a year, just in case, and it seems to be working for me.
There’s a filter in there…?
Oh no. No no no no. My friend, you are in for a horrible, terrible, awful surprise. I am so sorry.
I recommend keeping potential witnesses a good distance away from the entire kitchen and possibly wear a respirator and thick, protective rubber gloves to shield yourself from the horror you are about to extract from the “clean machine”.
No matter what happens don’t give up! Maybe have a bucket handy in case you need to exfiltrate the contents of your stomach.
Maybe. Some dishwashers grind up the food either with a garbage disposal-like macerator or by swirling/smashing the bits against a grate. That kind may not have a filter at all.
They still have the filter because they use it to conserve water. If they just flushed the water with each cycle it’d be very wasteful.
Depends on the washer.
Mine doesn’t have a filter, just a macerator. I still have to clean it once a month, filters are even worse. Dishwashers in general are nasty things.
And mine uses 4 gallons per full wash cycle.
