The Biggest Mistake You're Probably Making When Cleaning Your Dishwasher

One of the common refrains against the use of artificial intelligence in the arts is that we would rather have a machine do our dishes while we paint, not have a machine paint while we do dishes. The sentiment is difficult to argue with, but the pedants among us might point out that, well, we do have a machine that does our dishes. 

One of those wonders of the modern world we take for granted, the dishwasher renders a tedious, menial task utterly effortless. All you have to do is load your dirty dishes and cutlery, put in a dishwasher pod, let it go for a couple of hours, and hey presto — your dishes are shiny and clean.

However, it can be easy to forget that a particularly useful machine is still, in fact, a machine. If you don't know how a dishwasher works — it sprays hot water through spinning arms to wash, then rinse dishes — it can seem like a sort of magic box that makes messes disappear. But all those pasta bites and globs of cheese sauce from your favorite boxed mac and cheese have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is the filter. It gathers all the chunks of stuff that might have been left on plates by a careless dish loader so that they don't end up clogging the spinning spray arms. But, if the filter isn't manually cleared at a certain point, it won't be able to fit anything else inside, resulting in clogs, badly washed dishes, and even a breakdown. And, if you don't clean the dishwasher itself? It can lead to bad smells and, even worse, molds.

You're going to want to clean your dishwasher and its filter at least once a month — depending on how much you cook and how often you use it, you might want to clean it twice a month. It doesn't take much time or energy, and it will make your dishwashing experience easier and cleaner.

To clean the filter, you must first find it; it's usually on the bottom, and looks like a round cylinder you can unscrew and pull out. (Remember to unscrew it counter-clockwise: righty tighty, lefty loosey.) Using hot water and dish soap, soak the filter for a little bit to loosen up the accumulated gunk and grime, then gently scrub it away with some sort of soft-bristled brush, like a toothbrush, and rinse before putting it back in its rightful place.

As for cleaning your dishwasher, you can either use a cleaning tablet specifically for dishwashers, or you can take a DIY approach and use vinegar. Simply pour a cup of vinegar into some kind of receptacle (a cup or a mug will do the trick), set it face-up and uncovered on the top rack of your dishwasher, then run a cycle without detergent. Wipe down any residue remaining inside the dishwasher, and there you go. Next on the to-do list: making sure you're loading your dishwasher correctly.