Vinegar can make dishwasher rinses more effective.
One of the most frustrating aspects of housework occurs after carefully rinsing your dishes, loading your dishwasher and running the cycle: the dishes come out spotty and smeared. The purpose of rinse aids in dishwashers is to reduce the occurrence of spots and water stains on your dishes, and while many companies produce chemical rinse aids, you can use the common household staple vinegar to aid in the rinse cycle as well. Does this Spark an idea?
Hard Water Spots
Whether or not vinegar will serve as a successful rinse aid for your dishwasher cycle depends almost solely on the hardness of your water. Hard water leaves more stains and spots on your dishes because of the mineral deposits that are dissolved in the water. These miniscule minerals cling to the dish's surface as the water cascades over it, leaving the tell tale stains. The acid in vinegar is strong enough to remove stains caused by low or only moderately hard water, with fewer deposits; for water that is extremely hard and contains a lot of deposits, you need the chemical help of professional rinse aids to get rid of those spots.
Vinegar as Rinse Aid
To try vinegar as a rinse aid, wait until your rinse aid dispenser in your dishwasher is completely empty of your normal commercial rinse aid. Try not to mix the vinegar and chemicals, as they may cause greater staining or may completely cancel each other out. When the chemicals are all used up, fill up the dispenser with undiluted white vinegar. Completely fill the dispenser, so that you can ensure that the vinegar will be used for multiple washes, not just a single trial run. This will give you a better idea of whether or not it actually worked.
Vinegar in Rinse Cycle
If you only want to try one rinse cycle with the white vinegar, you can manually add the vinegar to the dishwasher during the rinse cycle. To do so, stop your dishwasher in the middle of the rinse cycle and open it up. Pour 1 ½ cups of undiluted white vinegar into the rinse aid dispenser at this time, close the dishwasher and restart the rinse cycle. This will enable you to see the effects of the white vinegar in a single wash alone.
Other Tips
To get the best understanding of whether or not vinegar will work for you, use the first method of filling the dispenser completely. Ignore the results in the first and second wash cycle, as the vinegar will be mixing in with the last of the commercial rinse aids. Inspect the dishes from subsequent cycles to get an idea of the effectiveness of the vinegar. If you see worsened spotting and staining, your water is too hard for the acid in vinegar alone, and your best bet is to use the chemical rinse aids.
Tags: rinse aids, rinse cycle, vinegar will, white vinegar, your dishwasher, your dishes, acid vinegar