The Easiest Way To Clean Your Dishwasher

Inside: Does your dishwasher have hard water stains and grime? Check out how to clean a dishwasher without vinegar. Find out how to use citric acid to easily clean the dishwasher.

Where we live we have hard water. I mean extreme hard water.

I actually received my dishwasher for free because they wanted people with extremely hard water to test them out.

When they came to do a test on the water they said it was about the hardest water they had ever seen.

Because of the hard water we get a build-up on everything. Including the inside of my dishwasher.

There is a thin white film that builds up on the walls and floors of the dishwasher, but the worst is I will start to notice that the drawers of the dishwasher squeak when you pull them out. It drives me crazy.

When the squeaking gets bad enough I know it is time to clean the dishwasher. If you are dealing with hard water in your dishwasher check out how to clean a dishwasher.

How To Clean A Dishwasher

I used to buy the dishwasher cleaning packs. They aren't cheap, around $5-$7 on Amazon, but they did a great job. Then, a few years ago they stopped working as well. I have heard that they had to change the formula.

I had tried other suggestions that I had read about on Pinterest like using Kool-Aid Lemonade packets but it never really worked.

Finally, I read an article that suggested using citric acid in the dishwasher.

I noticed that citric acid is way cheaper than buying a cleaning kit and it is food safe so I don't feel funny about using it in the dishwasher. It worked great!

Getting Started

To get started cleaning your dishwasher you will need a few things.

• citric acid (you can pick it up on Amazon)
• microfiber cloth
• all purpose cleaner (you can see how to make your own here)

Why you shouldn't use vinegar in the dishwasher!

Vinegar is great for cleaning and disinfecting. But, it can also cause damage to plastics and rubber. So if you use vinegar often you could damage the hoses and seals in your dishwasher leading to expensive repairs.

Cleaning The Dishwasher With Citric Acid

To clean your dishwasher I recommend filling up the soap dispenser with citric acid. Mine holds about 1/8 of a cup.

Then, add another 1/4 cup citric acid to a small bowl and place it in the top rack of the dishwasher.

This will quickly fill up with water and dispense more citric acid in the dishwasher.

Run the dishwasher on a high heat setting. I run mine on the 1-hour wash. This will easily allow the citric acid to clean and remove hard water build up and grime from your dishwasher.

Once the cycle is done open up the dishwasher and allow it to dry while you move on to the filters.

Clean The Dishwasher Filters

Take a few minutes to clean out your dishwasher filters. Remove any food or debris that is on the filters.

Then, use some dish soap (I prefer Dawn) and an old toothbrush to remove any grease or grime that is on the filters. Rinse the filters off after cleaning.

If your dishwasher is really bad (mine was the first time I tried this) you may need to run the dishwasher with citric acid a second time after cleaning the filters.

Your dishwasher will be clean and free from all the mineral deposits.

I was amazed at what a difference this simple trick made in getting rid of mineral deposits!

I now run citric acid through the dishwasher about once a month to keep the mineral deposits and hard water stains off the dishwasher.

Instead of paying $5-$8 dollars to clean my dishwasher each time I can pay $8 for citric acid and get about 8-12 cleaning from it.

You can buy citric acid in the grocery store (canning section), but I found it was cheaper on Amazon.  This has been such an easy way to get rid of hard water stains and mineral deposits and still save a little bit of money.

Plus, I love knowing that I am putting food grade products in my dishwasher.