Most houses have dishwashers. Sometimes, they work great. Other times, they leave food goo on the dishes. If the dishes are coming out with little food spots or goo on them, before spending hundreds or thousands on the new dishwasher, read this blog. Beware – some of the pictures might be disturbing.

Dishwasher 40+ years old do not have removable screens. In many cases, the older dishwashers came with built in garbage disposals. Now, only top end expensive new dishwasher have the garbage disposal. Most newer dishwashers have screens that need to be removed and cleaned with some frequency. The manuals provide frequency based on usage and water quality.

When we were at Aunt Elaine’s house for Thanksgiving, she mentioned that her dishwasher isn’t cleaning well, and she will most likely have to get a new dishwasher. I did a quick check and saw a screen inside the dishwasher and asked whether the screen has been removed and cleaned. “Nope.” We did not want to clean on the holiday with everyone running around, so we returned in January to do the dirty work 🙂

John’s Aunt indicated she has had the dishwasher for 5 or so years. The pictures reflect >5 years of buildup.

I’m going to let you guess which pictures were taken before the cleaning.

I used pretty basic tools. I like to use a denture cleaning brush or toothbrush. In this case, I needed more than just the brush, and I used dishwasher cleaner. I looked up the dishwasher manual on the internet to get instructions on how to remove the screens.

As a reminder to all dishwasher owners – check the screen and clean periodically.