Vinegar Saved My Dishwasher

I've known for years that white vinegar is great, non-toxic household cleaner.

But a few nights ago, I learned that it can help fix dishwashers, too.

My husband is a creature of habit, and I know that, so I'll take partial credit for the incident that happened. You see, we had been using store brand powder dishwasher detergent in our dishwasher. I was using it up before I started to use my gigantic stash of Electrasol dishwasher tablets I got for super dirt cheap last fall. Well, I forgot to tell my husband we were making the switch from the powder to the tabs.

He loaded the dishwasher and a short while later asked, "Why are there soap suds coming out of the dishwasher?"

It turns out, he thought I had switched to a liquid detergent.... so he filled up the dishwasher with plain good ol' Dawn dish soap!!! HUGE MESS! Our dishwasher was FULL of suds, and was making a funny noise.

I did a quick search on the internet and found a great, cheap solution: pour some salt and some white vinegar in to kill the soap bubbles. I then ran the dishwasher once more and it works fine now!

The funny thing was that when I did my search I discovered that hundreds of husbands and teenage sons everywhere have done the VERY SAME THING my husband did.

Anyway, my hubby and I both learned some lessons from the experience.