Did you know?

So my life has been really busy, I mean really busy and I love it! Lately, ok well maybe over the last year or so when I am unloading the dishes out of the dishwasher I have noticed  sandy looking particle on my glasses as well as a cloudy film. I would ask my plumber about it and he would say "Oh run some CLR thru your machine it probably needs a cleaning." Ok, my plumber lives 4 houses from me so I can ask him questions without being charged. CLR didn't help, vinegar didn't help nothing was helping get rid of those grains of grit. I figured I would just have to continue washing my classes by hand. AAUUUGGGHHHH!
Friday morning I got on Pinterest to pull up an activity for my kindergarten class and I saw a pin on how to clean your dishwasher. I opened up the blog it was pinned from and printed the directions for later and threw them into my purse, hoping I would have time to read them later.
When I finally got home from my meeting at 10:00pm Friday night I pulled out the direction and read that my dishwasher has a FILTER, who knew?!?!!? Since my house was completely empty (everyone was in San Francisco for the week and not coming home until Sat) I thought I would open up the filter and see what was going on.
Being 10:15pm I refused to go out into the garage and look for the sockets needed  to remove the filter. I had a pair of pliers and figured I would use it. With some patience I removed the filter from the back of my dishwasher. When I turned the filter over I was shocked at what I saw on that filter. . . years of built up dishwasher detergent, gunk and mold. Yes, mold the water under the filter doesn't drain all the way out (that will be another project to clear the drain).  It was the grosses thing I had ever seen.
After and hour and a half of soaking, scrubbing, and picking I got that filter cleaned and returned to the back of my dishwasher.  You should check your filter as well, I am going to try to make it an annual job because it was so nasty.