Both me and my wife are living an intense life, especially in the past 2 and half years since we’ve been blessed with our daughter. One of the things that definitely changed for us in terms of lifestyle is how much time we dedicate to housekeeping, just to make sure our baby girl has always a clean environment where she can play, live and grow.
A very special place in this entire adventure is cleaning our apartment and, more specifically, the dishes and all the utensils we use to cook, eat and store food. For this, we heavily rely on our dishwasher which runs at least once a day, if not twice.
That puts a lot of pressure on the device itself and creates the perfect environment for mold and other weird looking deposits at the bottom of the dishwasher.
Staying as safe and clean as possible is easy
Now because we really care what we’re using to both clean the dishes and the dishwasher, we made sure we’re making the right choices when it comes to detergent and other chemicals we use to do so. For detergent, we always go with Seventh Generation because it’s fragrance free and has only ingredients that don’t harm the environment.
Regardless, though, this doesn’t save us from occasional bad odor in the dishwasher so we need to throw in a different trick to deal with that. This usually happens when humidity is high and bacteria is present, which is exactly what dishwashers do (haha!).
Introducing: (cheap) white vinegar and baking soda
Here’s how you do it in 3 simple steps
- put 16 ounces of white vinegar in a pot making sure you’re not filling more than half of that pot’s height
- place the pot on the top rack of your dishwasher and set it to heavy cycle with hot water
- lastly, pour 5-6 generous tablespoons of baking soda on the bottom of the dishwasher
Leave the complete cycle go through and you’re done. What basically will happen is that the pot will gradually fill with water creating a diluted solution of vinegar which will then be pumped and recirculated during the main cycle at a high temperature. That allows for the vinegar to cover all potential bacteria and mold and kill it, disinfecting your dishwasher at the deepest level possible.
We do this every other Sunday and we’ve never had issues with mold or bad smell anymore. Not only that but vinegar deeply cleans other non-organic deposits in the washing machine, ensuring optimal operation as well. Also, the feeling of not using dangerous chemicals to clean our dishwasher is priceless.
Enjoy this hack, and feel free to comment with your experience!
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