Do you have extremely hard water like we do? Do your dishes come out looking like crap? Try some of these things to help!
First, make sure the filters in your dishwasher are cleaned out. They are in various places on different machines. I've had one that the filter was located under the sprayer arm and another that had a square filter in the back corner. If you still have your book, check it or google your model to find where the filter is located. I usually have to take a brush to the thing to get it clean but it makes a world of difference in how the dishes come out. This really should be done monthly. (I didn't even know about dishwasher filters until I was 40.) The cleanout doesn't get done around here as often as it should, Handsome's long arms are needed to reach the thing and take the parts apart. And I forget to ask him!
Soap makes all the difference in cleansing the dishes. There's a pre-rinse that happens to your dishes and an actual wash cycle. It helps take all the gunk off if there is soap available for the pre-rinse. That is why there are 2 spots for soap in the door. With the "new" dishwasher pods on the market, and those pods getting placed into the closed soap spot, that means that there is no soap in the pre-rinse cycle. What I did to solve this is purchase 2 different kinds of pods. I buy the fancy Cascade** ones and the cheapest store brand ones. I place the fancy pod in the soap dispenser that closes and the cheap one in the silverware basket. Then, when the pre-rinse starts, there is soap available to help start dissolving the gunk off the dishes. I do not use any rinse aid at all; dishes are clean.
One other thing to do is to run a cleaning cycle in your dishwasher every whipstitch. I started using these cleaner tabs** and I like these better than the little bottles of stuff you can buy at Wally. The dishwashers were very clean and fresh smelling when I used these tabs. To use them, you leave the dishwasher empty; add a tab to the empty silverware basket and set the machine to a normal cycle. So easy.
Without a water softener to help with the hard water, everything around here shows a layer of lime scale. What do you do to help reduce the hard water issues you're facing?
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