Deep Cleaning

Originally posted on Tuesday, February 21, 2012

A fortunate/unfortunate byproduct of the current Pinterest craze is the constant influx of cleaning ideas.  How to clean your home by doing only one job a day.  A daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning list.  Make your own soap.  How to keep baseboards dust free and faucets spot free.  How to deep clean your washer.  How to deep clean your dishwasher.  Tony and I are always fascinated by these lists.  Partly because we marvel at anyone having the time to actually accomplish all of it, and partly because we so want to be the ones who are using this list and living in these pristine homes.  

Today while perusing one of the lists and helpful tricks I saw the how to clean your dishwasher post.  I have to admit to feeling like a college kid for a moment... Uh, I should clean my dishwasher?  Doesn’t it spend it’s entire career surrounded by soap and water?  Still, I read the steps to Tony who looked into the second most used appliance in our home and said... Yeah, we should clean this.

Horrified, I looked over his shoulder.  How does it get to this point?!?  I think we are so focused on the things we can see that we’ve turned a blind eye, for THREE YEARS, to the science experiment in our dishwasher.  It was embarrassing.  And so kiddies... should there be dishwashers in the future, let me tell you what you need to do:

1. Remove the drain (because yes, it has one) and apparently it will be clogged with melted plastic, things that backed up from the garbage disposal, and unidentifiable stringy things that look like hair, but you’ll tell yourself that it is most definitely celery string.
2. Place a pyrex measuring cup filled with 2c of white vinegar on the top shelf.  Keep the rest of the DW empty and run the whole thing on the hottest setting for a full cycle.
3. After the vinegar wash scrape any loose bits that have now dislodged themselves from the rims.  This is about as much fun as picking a scab.
4. Sprinkle the bottom of the dishwasher with baking soda - use at least a cup.  Again run the empty DW on the hottest setting for a full cycle.

At this point the articles promise you a pristine, better than new interior to your dishwasher.  If this is the first time that you have cleaned your dishwasher in 3 years this will not be the case, but it will look a heck of a lot better than it just did.  In fact it will look and CLEAN so much better that you will promise yourself that you will not wait 3 years to do this again, in fact you may just put this on your monthly cleaning chart - should you ever make one.

Next up:  the laundry machine and making our own soap!  FUN!