HOW TO DEEP CLEAN YOUR DISHWASHER!
Congratulations! You got your home all cleaned and ready
for showing, or so you thought. You walk into your kitchen and what is that
funky smell? It happens all the time. The number one item that gets missed on a
deep cleaning is your dishwasher. Today I'm going to show you how you can deep
clean your dishwasher using products you probably already have in your kitchen
and no harsh chemicals.
CHECK YOUR DRAIN
First, make sure your dishwasher is empty of all dishes. Then remove your bottom rack
and place it to the side. Then you're going to check your drain pipe. Sometimes
you have to pull these off with a screwdriver. You might have to have a
specialty screwdriver because this one takes the star head. I popped it off. I
took a look. This drain is clear, but if your drain is not clear, you will need
to call a service tech to come in and check your drain.
CHECK YOUR SEALS
Next,
we're going to check our seals. As you can see, there's a little bit of some
white fungus in there. Means we probably have some mold issues. Your seals are
the most common place to have mold and mildew build up. We're going to use a
mixture of just vinegar and water, and we're going to spray along our seal and
wipe it down.
CHECK YOUR DOOR JAMS
Now
that our seals are wiped down, we need to check them on the inside here, where
the door meets with the bottom because a lot of times you can get mold in
there. I see it a little bit, so we're going to spray this down with the
vinegar and water and wipe it off with the cloth. Check the rims as well on
your dishwasher. I see a little bit of debris there, so we're going to clean it
with that vinegar and water too. Okay.
CHECK YOUR FILTER
Now,
next thing that we have to do, you need to check our filter. Make sure there's
nothing gunking it up. So, to do that, every dishwasher is different, but for this
one, I just take this swing arm off. Okay, and I check this too. Let's see,
it's got a little bit of funk in it, so I'm going to take the swing arm and I'm
going to rinse it off with soap and water in the sink, and then make sure that
it's good and clean before I put it back, but while we have this off, we have
to look at our filter. This is our filter here. We also have a secondary
filter, so I need to take these three screws out. Some of them, they'll have
like six screws, but this one just has three.
CHECK YOUR SWING ARMS
Okay.
So I popped that off. If I look underneath, there's some gunk in there too, so
we need to clean that with just regular water, just regular water, just rinse
it off with some hot water. Here's our actual filter. So we pull our filter off
and we take a look. It's got a little bit of debris in there, so we're going to
clean that filter. Look, I even have stickers on it from cups that I've put in
there before. Oops. Then make sure down in the bottom part is cleaned out. If
you have any debris down in here, you can use a cotton swab or wipe it out with
a washcloth. We're going to rinse these and then we're going to put them back.
USE VINEGAR ON LIGHT CYCLE WASH
Now
that we have our swing arm put back in place, we've checked our filters and
everything, we can look up at our top arm or our top swing arm. I don't see any
debris on this one, but if I did, I would take it off and rinse it with soap
and water just like we did with the bottom one. Now we're going to open the top
rack. I'm going to put a cup in here and that has one cup of vinegar in it.
Replace our bottom rack, and we're going to run this on a light cycle on the
hottest water possible.
USE BAKING SODA ON DEEP CYCLE WASH
Okay.
Now that that is done, you can see our cup filled up with water. We're going to
take our cup out and dump it into the sink. We're going to pull our bottom rack
out. We are going to sprinkle baking soda on the bottom. Try to avoid your
heating elements. Just sprinkle it around. Now this time, instead of a light
cycle, we're going to put it on deep wash, the hottest water possible.
DISHWASHER DEEP CLEANING COMPLETE
That
is how you deep clean your dishwasher to get your home ready for showings. I'm
Rhonda Walker, real estate agent in Franklin, Kentucky. Like, share, subscribe,
or follow in order to get more tips and tricks on how you can get your home
ready to sell. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great day!