Anyone can share and celebrate success. But it takes strength to admit failure. So, now, I'll share with you a failure I had, and how I only recently conquered it.
Self-reliance is one of my core values. And some of you may know that this extends to trying to repair my own stuff, especially the machines that help me take care of myself.
My dishwasher was not washing the dishes in the top rack. Furthermore, whatever dishwasher detergent I put in the dispenser, would only be partly dissolved. It wouldn't matter whether the detergent was a powder or liquid, name brand or store brand--half of it would be stuck inside the dispenser.
Long story short, the cause was my own darn fault. I had taken apart the dishwasher to replace the filter and clean the spray arms*, and I thought I put everything back together. It turned out that I forgot to include one tiny, but important part: the spray nozzle.
I didn't immediately recognize its importance when I saw it three weeks ago, while doing some cleaning up in my laundry room. Then I realized, Hey, little this plastic part is the same gray color as the upper and lower spray arms in my dishwasher.
I took another look at a YouTube video** about cleaning those spray arms in hopes that I could figure out where that part was supposed to go. And yep, it was supposed to go smack dab in the middle of the lower arm.
Even after putting that part back in its place, I had my doubts as to what impact a tiny little part*** would have. I said to myself, "That might be better--I'll just have to find out, won't I?"
To my amazement, the dishwasher worked the best it has in a long time. I had been using the dishwasher without that part for over a year, which meant I had been washing glasses, mugs and anything else I would have put in the top-rack by hand for that long.
Before this month, the frustration I had with my dishwasher had gotten to the point where I seriously considered buying one of those newfangled Chinese countertop dishwashers**** on Amazon. Two weeks ago, I deleted those dishwashers from my Amazon wish list. That felt so good.
*At that time, the dishes in both the top and bottom racks were coming out dirty. The root cause of that problem had nothing to do with the filter or the spray arms; it was actually a clogged kitchen drain. Every time my dishwasher tried to drain out the dirty water at the end of a cycle, it would back up into the kitchen sink, and some of it would end up back in the dishwasher. Once I unclogged that drain, it made a huge difference in the bottom rack, which left me with the top rack to deal with.
**That video is available here.
*** It certainly is a critical part, and replacement parts sites price them accordingly. RepairClinic charges $30.76 plus shipping for it. As of April 25, someone on eBay had a used one for $18. It's a good thing I didn't throw mine out by mistake.
****These little countertop dishwashers come from a variety of brands, just not any that I would necessarily trust for kitchen appliances. They also require plenty of countertop space and would set me back at least a couple hundred bucks.
Learnings:
1. Don't assume that there's only one problem. It's possible the spray arms and the filter were issues, but so was the clog in the kitchen drain.
2. No tool will work well if it's incomplete. Even a tiny part can make all the difference.
