Dishwasher Cleaning

Keep your dishwasher clean and functioning well by following my methods below. This will also prevent that musty smell from appearing!

For cleaner dishes and to rid of bad smells, I recommend cleaning your dish washer on a regular basis. Below I will describe how I keep on top of mine. These tips will also help your dishwasher to perform better, and for longer!

Regular Tasks

🍋 Dishwasher Filter: Remove from you dishwasher and just simply rinse and pop back in. For a deep clean, scrub with some dishwashing liquid or leave to soak in some disinfectant. Also ensure any food debris are removed from the interior of your dishwasher.

🍋 Give your door seals a quick wipe down- this will help to protect the seals and will stop a build up of grime from forming.

Deep Cleaning Tasks

🍋 Monthly: If you feel like your dishwasher needs a quick freshen up you can pop in a capful of scented disinfectant or some white vinegar. Both are good at neutralising odours.

🍋 Quarterly: Run your disher on an empty hot wash using your chosen dishwasher cleaning product. There are lots to chose from and are designed to specially target problems such as limescale in your dishwasher. A good multi purpose product to use would be citric acid. You simply pour some into your tablet dispenser and put on to a hot wash. This product is also good for your kettle, and irons!

🍋  Every six months: Remove your spray arms, rinse any debris away under some warm water. If there are any bits stuck in the holes, poke something through. A cocktail stick may work!

Keeping your dishwasher clean

🍋 Remove any left over bits of food, no matter how small before placing your dishes in the dishwasher. It will only get stuck in your filters otherwise. My other half is always pulling me up on this one 🙈

🍋 Keep your rinse aid topped up. Not only does this help your dishes to be cleaner and dry better, it will also help to keep your machine clean. It works as a water repellant and has properties to help food debris not get stuck to your dishes. This is of course true for your dishwasher, it will keep the interior food free and the water repellant action will help to prevent limescale deposits from forming.

🍋  If you live in a hard water area I would also recommend using dishwasher salt. It softens the water to help prevent limescale from developing. This is placed into your dishwashers inbuilt unit for it, typically at the bottom of your washer.

🍋 Not necessary,  but I like to place a dishwasher freshener in my machine too. Leaves a lovely long lasting fresh scent.