Rinse Aid Alternative (for dishwashers)

Please excuse the condition of our floor, we're renovating!

Ever wonder how Rinse Aid works on your dishes? Well, I gotta tell you, you won't like it!!

Like many of you, my dishwasher left spots on my dishes! UGH! Why have a dishwasher if you have to first rinse off your dishes and then hand dry them so there are no spots???

We even got a new dishwasher thinking this would solve all our problems... WRONG!! So, the dishwasher repair man came over to 'fix' our new machine. UGH AGAIN!

Anyways, he was in a talkative mood! Yay for me! Here is what I learned: Apparently Rinse Aid LEAVES something on your dishes to keep the water from sticking to your dishes and leaving a mark when it dries. HUH?!?! Now, all this time, I thought some magical thing was happening in there, where my dishes were coming out of the dishwasher CLEAN and SPARKLING from all this washing and rinsing off!

I am SO not into adding some other chemical to my dishes, which inevitably ends up in my mouth and in my body. .

The solution he tells me? You guessed it! VINEGAR! YAY!!! Safe for me and safe for the environment and not too bad on the bank roll either!

So, here is what I have started to do that works for us: I put vinegar in the rinse Aid compartment in my dishwasher and run a full cycle of dishes. AFTER it's done I take out my whisks, which seem to rust from the vinegar, and put the whole thing through a rinse cycle with just a little vinegar. Probably about 2 Tbsp. Then I open the dishwasher door to let dry till the next time I do dishes. I usually do dishes in the evening, so it works in my home. This works especially well for those of us with hard water stains on our dishes!

A free tip about dishwasher detergent: apparently, we also use far too much detergent that gums up our machines and keeps them from filtering the crumbs that are whooshing around in there. Try using LESS!