While dishwashers have been around for a long time, most homeowners know only their basic workings. As you can guess, this means that they always achieve mediocre results with their appliances.

What they don’t know is that there are plenty of dishwasher hacks they can use to get cleaner dishes and maintain their appliances for a long time. Wondering which hacks are these? Here they are as given by dishwasher repair professionals:

You don’t need to rinse the dishes

To make the work easy for the dishwashers, some homeowners rinse their dishes. This is unnecessary.

If you have been taking good care of your dishwasher, the appliance shouldn’t have a problem wiping off the chunks of extra food that could potentially clog your drains.

A well-maintained dishwasher should generate enough water pressure and heat to wash off even food that might have dried and stuck on the dishes.

Run a cycle with vinegar

If you have hard water and your dishwasher builds up mineral deposits, run a cycle with vinegar. The beauty of vinegar is natural, so you don’t have to worry about damaging your dishwasher. It’s also highly effective at getting rid of the musty smells, so you have a fresh-smelling appliance.

Once every few weeks, run a complete dishwasher cycle without any dishes or detergent. The vinegar will remove all the trapped particles, detergent residues, and minerals that might have built up in the appliance.

Load the dishes from the back to front

It’s definitely easier to pop a crack in the dishwasher and stick your dirty dishes there, but this isn’t the right way to go about it. This is because this leads to you having a problem keeping the dishes clean and unloading them.

For your dishes to be clean and easy to unload, pull the rack all the way out and load the dishwasher from the back to front.

Organize your flatware properly

If you don’t have a premium dishwasher with a horizontal silverware tray, place the forks and spoons pointing up and some pointing down. If your appliance doesn’t allow this, ensure that you don’t put all the forks together—mix them up with spoons.

When you mix them up, you allow the water to pass through each utensil more easily, so you have cleaner tines and spoon surfaces.

Arrange the plates facing inward

Most of the standard dishwasher models have sprayer arms that shoot water from the bottom center of the machine, stopping just a few inches short of the interior walls.

If you arrange the plates facing outward, the water jets might fail to reach the surfaces facing the wall, and you have unwashed dishes by the end of the cycle. To avoid this, arrange the plates facing inwards instead.

Put the bowls on the bottom rack, facing the center

Due to their shape, it’s tempting to place the bowls in the empty spots in the dishwasher, but don’t do this as they might damage the plates. They also might not get as clean as you want them.

To avoid this, place the bowls at the bottom rack, facing the center. When placing them, ensure there is a little overlap between them as much as possible. This is to ensure that the bowls receive the full force of the water stream and you don’t have smudgy spots.

Place the delicate items on the top rack.

The fragile items such as plastic storage containers, stemware, and glasses should go in the top rack, away from the jets. The reason for this is because the water pressure and temperature are a tad lower here. As a result, the items you place here are less likely to break or melt.

You can use the dishwasher to clean other items.

Besides the dishes, you can use the dishwasher to clean other items such as plastic kids’ toys, baseball caps, metal cabinet handles, and plastic combs. To ensure that these items get thoroughly clean, appliance repair Alexandria professionals recommend that you place them at their appropriate racks.

You also should run them on a separate cycle—don’t mix them with your dirty dishes. Before you put anything in the dishwasher, confirm that it’s dishwasher safe. You don’t want to damage it, do you?

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