Five Surprising Uses for Your Dishwasher

Dishwashers are amazing time savers and more effecient. There’s nothing quite like clearing a huge pile of dishes after friends come to visit and having a machine do the cleaning for you while you go back to watching TV. It’s also nice to know it’s more energy efficient than washing by hand if you fully load it first. However, there are a few amazing things you can put in your dishwasher that you’ve probably never considered.

What Else Can I Put In the Dishwasher?

Put your tooth brushes

Tooth brushes and electric toothbrush heads get pretty dirty over their lifetime. Even if you do change them at the recommended intervals of three months, that’s still a lot of time for bacteria to build up, bacteria which you’re putting back into your mouth twice a day. You can easily put these in the dishwasher, however, and they’ll come out sparkling clean.

Put your baseball caps

Whether you wear them for sports or just think they look cool, baseball caps can get pretty grimy after weeks of wearing them out in the sun. The washing machine will distort the shape of the cap, but the dishwasher won’t. While it’s safer to hand wash them in the sink with some detergent if it’s particularly valuable, most should wash just fine in the dishwasher. Just check your cap isn’t made of wool, doesn’t have a cardboard brim or show any signs of damage, and doesn’t specify “cold wash only,” and you should be good to go.

Silicone pacifiers and plastic toys

Both of these kids’ items will wash great in the dishwasher, and it’s a good idea to clean them fairly often, as your kids will be either touching them or sticking them in their mouths (hopefully just the pacifiers) on a regular basis. Put them in the silverware basket or top rack and then let them air dry before re-use. Note that latex pacifiers usually aren’t dishwasher safe, so check the material first.

Removable stove grates and plastic oven dials

If you look at these items in your kitchen now, even neat freaks will probably notice they could do with a thorough clean. If there’s room, you can put these in the dishwasher, and all the years of food grease and sauce spills will come right off without the need to furiously scrape it off by hand.

Cooking: Salmon and Potatoes

Many people attest to the power of the dishwasher to cook salmon and potatoes. For salmon, wrap it tightly in foil and put it on the top rack. After a hot cycle, it will come out ready to eat; the result is similar to poaching. If you’re running the dishwasher before dinner anyway, then this turns is an eco-friendly cooking method. The process for the potatoes is the same. It won’t cook them completely but is a great pre-cooking method which makes mashing them afterward a breeze.

Your dishwasher can be a multi-use cleaner for a range of household items that probably don’t get cleaned enough, as well as a surprisingly effective cooking method for salmon and potatoes. Give it a try — your friends are sure to be amazed.

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