You mean detergent right?

Apologies for the youtube link but this guy fits in nicely with the lemmy crowd and made a 40min video about optimal use of dishwashers and detergent. He does promote a specific powder detergent... but its from a good company 👈👈😎 and backed with science.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DAX2_mPr9W8&pp=ygUhdGVjaG5vbG9neSBjb25uZWN0aW9ucyBkaXNod2FzaGVy

Someone else posted a video that covered this. Some dishwashers (not mine) have a pre-wash spot for putting the soap. In the video, the guy had his spot actually on top of the soap door, so it would be measured but falls straight in with the dishes when you close the door for the pre-wash. He said in the video to just add a tablespoon of dishwashing powder on the door or in the bottom if yours doesn't have a prewash spot.

I have learnt a lot from that video and all the comments here!

Gotta run that water till its hot, and use the powder, brother.

Also refill the dishwasher salt!

Another tip is to pop out the spray arms in the machine, and clean and decalcify them.

(If you wondered "what's dishwasher salt", you probably have a lot of blockage in the spray arms, and get less pressure as a result)

As someone who never reads manuals. This.

That dishwasher isn't designed to be self-cleaning -- it needs help. Clean the filter regularly. Maybe every other load depending on how you pre-wash.

Same vibe for a lint filter in your washing machine. I think many people check the dryer lint trap, but the washer also has one. And the dryer vent hose will collect lint.

There are air filters in your furnace, probably, that need to be checked too, not just the intakes in a few rooms; and the AC drain line needs to be cleaned occasionally or it will back up and make a water mess.

There are just a thousand maintenance tasks that we are presumably supposed to just know, but no one told us, and can become serious problems when they are ignored. As the world becomes more complicated, there are only more of these.

Used to have issues. Alec has solved them all for me. Great video.

i rent a house that does not have a dishwasher and i hand washed everything for a while.

i bought a small countertop dish washer, it’s like 2x2 foot or so. you have a house that you stick on the sink tap.

it’s large enough to handle like 3-4 days of dishes, uses less water then hand washing by a lot, and saves so much time, takes not much power.

i just load it up, put some soap inside the trap and some outside, run the water through the pass through until hot and let it run. it cost me about $250 when i got it. it’s been running well for 5 years now

That sounds like almost as much work as washing by hand!

I'd rather pre rinse then always be cleaning all that rotting food out of the filter.