Don't Stick Your Head in the Dishwasher

Seriously, what was in there?

This morning there was a little piece of a sippy cup at the bottom of my dishwasher.  As I stuck my hand in to get it out, I made the mistake of looking around in there.  Unless you want to clean your dishwasher friends, never, ever do this.

It was GROSS.  I had no idea that something that cleans stuff could be so dirty.  All along the sides there was this thick soap scum, and the bottom edge of the door had become a collecting spot for this weird, gray sludge.  

So instead of loading the dishwasher back up with dirty dishes, I was suddenly thrown into the extra task of cleaning out the sludge.  I grabbed an Enviro Cloth, and that took care of most of it.  I thought I was going to need the Cleaning Paste, but the Enviro just sort of just melted it off.  I took out the silverware basket and cleaned it in the sink with some dish soap and a SpiriSponge, and that cleaned up pretty quickly too.  I wiped down all the inside walls and the bottom the best I could reach, and then went to the computer to see what Google said I should do.

I learned that there are filters at the bottom of the dishwasher - did you know that?  I didn’t.  It looks like some dishwashers have larger pieces that unscrew and come out that you can wash, but the pieces on mine that unscrewed were much smaller.  But, when I took it out, there was a large piece of plastic that came out, all full of soap scum and ick.  It looked like a piece of a grocery bag or something.  I have no idea how that got in my dishwasher, but it should surely run better now.

After reassembling it, I threw a cup of white vinegar in the bottom and ran the heavy duty cycle with no dishes in there.  Google suggested doing some sort of cleaning cycle, but my machine didn’t have that.  When it was done, it was kind of shiny and all the little gobs of goop that I had unleashed were all cleaned up.  I also read that you can put some baking soda in the bottom over night if you are having smell issues, but after the vinegar cycle, it really looked and smelled fresh again.

I would say beginning to end, my actual cleaning time was maybe 15 minutes.  So if you decide to stick your head in the dishwasher, let me know how it goes.