Cleaning Yuck

NOTE: Because the before picture was so disgusting my mom made me take it off the blog. It will however be available by request. Yup, 37 years old and my mom can still tell me what to do. Moms have power - must use it wisely!

I really can't believe that I'm going to show you these pictures - but if it can save anyone from making the same mistake I did - well. . . let me just say that if you have a weak stomach you should leave this page now. I. Am. Not. Kidding. !

Where to start. . . from time to time when I call my friend Julie and ask what she's doing she'll say she's cleaning her dishwasher. I kinda knew what she meant but never really went into details. Then my sister was over and saw the inside of my dishwasher and she said that she takes hers apart and cleans it. Hmmm. . . THEN I was reading Good Housekeeping I think it was and Heloise said she does a yearly clean on her dishwasher. Do ya think I should have gotten the message a long time ago! Nope. Then I was reading a blog and the author said she cleans the gunk from her dishwasher once a year or so. How long have I had my dishwasher? Well let's see, we've lived here NINE AND A HALF YEARS!! And I've NEVER taken it apart to clean it!!! It came with the house so who knows how long it's gone on like this! Sometimes my ignorance astounds me. I had noticed that it wasn't doing as good of a job as it used to. . . well, I decided to tackle the problem. Oh boy - remember when your kids would puke and you'd have to shut off your brain to clean up the mess. Well, yes, it was that bad. I just had to turn off my brain and go into auto-pilot. The only reason I'm showing you a before picture is because there is an equally amazing after picture. Only they are amazing for different reasons - ha ha! See that layer of black cruddy scum that is about 2 inches thick? That isn't supposed to be there! It was actually almost covering the grate where the water drains out of the dishwasher - I think. I almost thought the black crud was some sort of filter at first. In the after picture you will see the sparkly white thingy - well the disgusting black, cruddy, slimy and revolting thing was underneath it. shudder. You can bet your booty that I'll be putting this on the yearly cleaning list. It would be more often than that but to get everything apart I had to take out about 6 screws that were positioned in awkward places. Kinda like working under the sink.

The disgusting BEFORE picture -

And the amazing AFTER picture!

I almost hate to say that this is just one area of the dishwasher - when you do clean yours (and how can you not after seeing this?) unscrew everything you can and scrub - scrub - scrub! Just make sure you take pictures so you know how it all goes back together again!