Wednesday 29 May 2013

Dishwasher Dilemna



Pooh.  The dishwasher isn’t working very well.  I’m not a particularly big fan of dishwashers, and I had conveniently ignored my dishwasher for six months, then after some visitors left, decided to run it one day.  You can only imagine the mess as I mopped up the buckets of water flooding my kitchen.


So, I promptly ignored it for another year or so.  Are you sensing a theme here?  I had been having the age-old mental debate:  do I buy a new one or repair what I assumed were old, dried out seals?  I ran the dishwasher again, and after a bit of a false start, it ran through a cycle just fine.  Two years of wasted dishwashing. :-)


I’m just not satisfied with the quality of the washing and rinsing.  I invariably have to rinse several plates/bowls/ pans at the end of the cycle, because there is a small amount of gunk still on them.  And the glasses, well, they don’t sparkle and shine.  


I’ve been using Morning Fresh detergent (which supposedly has a rinsing agent in it) but have also used rinse-aid, and when that ran out, I used a vinegar solution.


As an aside, I’m keen to try a home-made dishwasher detergent, with vinegar as the rinse-aid, and will do so as soon as the Morning Fresh runs out.  Have found a recipe here:




But back to my dishwashing woes – I thought perhaps it was the door seal disintegrating and leaving a nasty residue on my dishes, but I’m leaning back towards it being the dishwashing powder not dissolving.


At the moment, I’m washing out the dishwasher after each cycle, particularly along the base under the door jam, as this is where grime accumulates, and I think I will pull out the filter and give it a good scrub.  Hopefully this will ease the problem. 


The boy-child and I are thinking of perhaps moving within a year, and I would hate to have to buy a new machine, just to move out.   There’s only two of us at home, so no great necessity for the machine in the first place.  I just want to keep it on its last legs a little while longer!!


It has started pouring down here while I’ve been typing.  Hope it eases up before the boy-child catches the bus home.

Note to Self:






Happy Thursday, boys and girls.  Friday night can't come fast enough for me!! :-)