My God, WHAT Is Happening with Your Dishwashers?!?

Looks like the dishwashers are going to be The Recurring Theme of AaCP: The Newsletter

Hi Jolie,

Longtime fan here! Since you were kind enough to answer my personal questions about bra-washing on the handwash cycle a few years ago, I thought I'd try my luck with a couple more questions and see if you have time to respond. 

My dishes have started to smell like the dishwasher pods. It's a relatively new machine (maybe 2.5 years?) — a Bosch 300 something. And I use the recommended brand of pods — Finish Quantum, which are pretty expensive and clean very well. Recently, I've noticed that my dishes have started to smell like the pods, which freaks me out because a) gross, and b) I have a baby and don't want her ingesting chemicals. What should I do? Based on my cursory research, it seems like maybe the dishwasher needs to go through a cleaning cycle with vinegar. Is that what you'd recommend? In the past I've used a Finish dishwasher cleaning product but haven't in a while because my grocery store stopped carrying it.

There are two different but related Ask a Clean Person phenomena that I've talked about from time to time over the years that seem to be back from the dead along with AaCP itself. 

The first is that, once in a blue, I'll get a series of very similar questions in a short period of time that fall way outside the realm of normal. There is no rhyme or reason I can sort out about these things — it's not, like, "Oh five questions about cleaning up tree needles in December, I wonder why that could be?!?" It's more like, "Why have I gotten three questions from people who need to clean a pound of melted butter out of their car seats in the last nine weeks??" (Raise your hand if you remember the melted butter!)

The second, which is what's happening here, is that there are certain audiences who ask the same question more often than, like, any other question they could ask. At Deadspin it was couches, my God, those friends had so many questions about their couches, it was amazing! At the New York Times, it was glass shower doors. I have no explanation for why the readers of the New York Times have such a difficult and complicated relationship to their glass shower doors, I can only report faithfully that they do.

Now in this new iteration of AaCP, it looks like we have our very own pet problem: You guys WHAT is going on with your dishwashers?!? I've been doing this newsletter for, like, an entire minute now and I've already gotten THREE queries about troublesome dishwashers! (This isn't a complaint, please never stop coming to me about your dishwasher problems!)

With that now-standard ramble out of the way, here comes help: I suspect — and I'm going to give myself about a 95% chance of accuracy on this one because I'm pretty confident I'm right about this — that what's happening is that the detergent packs are not dissolving entirely, and bits of the PVA are getting trapped in the dishwasher's filter. That would account for why you're smelling a strong detergent smell in the unit and on your dishes: Those bits of PVA — that's the material the outer coating of detergent packs are made of, which is short for polyvinyl alcohol — will retain trace amounts of detergent and its fragrance. 

It's frustrating, of course, that this is happening, especially because you're using the (spendy!) detergent that is literally recommended by Bosch. That's not right, Bosch! We should gather in a circle and chant, "BE BETTER, BOSCH," while tossing around herbs and frogs to make them nervous that we're spellcasting! Truly, how infuriating.

So, what is to be done here? Well, two things.

The first is that you should give the dishwasher a good cleaning to flush out any lingering PVA and detergent. I already wrote about how to clean a dishwasher, so instead of reiterating all that, I'll point you to the previous newsletter on the subject for those instructions. You mentioned that the dishwasher cleaning tablets you'd been using are no longer available, and there are a few alternate brands I can recommend if you prefer to use them over vinegar. Affresh is the big one — the brand is recommended by a ton of appliance manufacturers and also regularly turns up as the top pick in testing from publications like Better Homes & Gardens (I'm biased, obvs!) — but there are plenty of other brands making dishwasher tabs. Cascade, Lemishine, Plink, etc. are all good.  

The second is, of course, that we don't just want to fix the problem — we want to prevent it from happening again! You have a couple of options [obligatory "we love options!!!" goes here]:

• Switch to liquid dishwasher detergent, which will not pose the same dissolution issues since there's no PVA barrier. Powder detergents are another way to go, but they don't dissolve as well as liquid detergents and can leave behind powdery deposits. This is why we don't see them as much anymore, but they are still on the market and, you know, we love options! So I mention it. 

• Keep using the same detergent packs (because you like them and you said they work well!) but be diligent about cleaning the dishwasher once a month to clear out any PVA stuck in the filter.

• If you decide to stick with the packs, try placing them in the bottom of the unit rather than in the detergent dispenser, which may solve the problem of them not fully dissolving by placing them directly in the line of the appliance's sprayer.

• Before starting a wash cycle, run the tap water until it's hot to ensure that the water coming through the dishwasher's water line is HOT. Doing so will help those packs dissolve completely, and will also give you a better overall clean.

I feel pretty confident that this is all the info you need to solve the problem but if it persists after tinkering with your detergents and such, please come on back and we can dig a bit deeper.

Before I leave you to go write about laundry detergent sheets for my day job — and oh man, do I ever have things to say to you about detergent sheets, get excited!!! — a quick programming note: I'm going to be doing a reddit AMA on Thursday at, I believe, Noon pacific time. I'll confirm that on Wednesday, when I'll send out another newsletter to answer the second (excellent!) question this LW had about cleaning a jetted tub, since there are a few details we're still working out, but for now, tentatively plan to join me in r/LifeProTips on Thursday at Noon PDT.