Dishwashers

A little while back, I decided to stop buying dishwasher rinse aid and start using white vinegar. I didn't really make sure that all of the rinse aid had gone out of the dispenser and I ended up with a red scummy substance that looked a little like rust. Despite my attempts at overflowing the dispenser to remove it, there was more and more of the stuff. Also, the overflowing attempts had left of streak of rust colored stain down the inside of the dishwasher door!

I discovered that the best way to clean out this thing was to either take apart the door (p.i.t.a.) or use a syringe. I happened to have a syringe from when Tim had his wisdom teeth out, but it couldn't reach all of the liquid inside... so I stole the little red flow director tube from a can of compressed air and fitted it on the end. Voila! I rinsed it out twice with water and twice with vinegar. I filled it with vinegar again and no more red junk.

Unfortunately, the stain and some others were still there. So next I had to figure out the secret behind dishwasher cleaner. It is made almost entirely of citric acid. There's really no secret to that because almost all products have to list their active ingredient for safety reasons. A bit of internet research led me to this little tidbit: 3 unsweetened lemonade drink mix packets in the main cup is enough citric acid to do the same job. It HAS to be lemon and unsweetened or you'll just make more mess.

So now I had a clean dishwasher, but the vinegar was doing just about the same job as the previous rinse aid: not that great. Now, we had been using some sort of Palmolive eco liquid that was doing an excellent job of cleaning, but we have a 'portable' dishwasher and they don't have the best cleaning power in the world. After searching around for more info, I discovered that nearly every dishwasher repairman with an internet presence believes that liquid detergents leave some sort of residue every time and recommends powder instead.... I also discovered that if you want more rinse aid power, you should get a product with built in rinse aid. This has led us to switch to Cascade complete powder. So far I would say it is worth the money, but it is really too bad that it is the only powder with built in rinse aid that I can find.