Use vinegar and baking soda to clean out the inside of your dishwasher.
A dishwasher is one of the main appliances that you use, so shouldn’t you be giving it the attention it needs to stay clean? We clean the rest of our
appliances when they get dirty -- the food out of the bottom of the oven, the microwave after we have soup boil over. But did you know that you should be cleaning your dis
hwasher about once a month? Even if your plates are coming out shining and clean, you can start to smell a foul odor. This is because of the bacteria and mold growing in different spots around your dishwasher.
The door gasket and the drain filter can both be spots that odor-causing bacteria can grow. The drain filter is usually the common part of the dishwasher that collects odor, but an article from Sears says that the door gasket can also create odors:
“The door gasket is the black rubber tubing that lines the opening of the dishwasher. The gasket has a magnetic strip on the inside to help it cling to the dishwasher door frame and prevent water from leaking out during cycles. Sometimes, food particles that get washed off dishes during the cleaning cycle get stuck on the sides of the gasket, so the gasket may need to be wiped down every now and then with a damp cloth or paper towel.”
Can you fix this smell? Easily. Both of these parts can be cleaned at the same time with these three easy steps:
1. First off you should start by cleaning out the drain filter of food. Food that is left sitting there can start to smell.
2. Next, fill a cup with vinegar and place it on the top shelf of your dishwasher with no other dishes, and run it on normal cycle.
3. After that cycle is finished, sprinkle baking soda in the bottom of the dishwasher and run the cycle again. This should get rid of the smell.
Lemons also work well as an odor fighting agent. If you would rather work with lemons, place a cup of lemon peels on the top shelf--again, with no other dishes--and run the cycle. This should help with the smell as well. Make sure you aren’t using any sort of bleach though. Bleach can erode the metal in your dishwasher potentially causing a bigger problem.
