Baking soda and my dishwasher...

[Christine&men]

... I read somewhere that I can use baking soda to do the dishes in the dishwasher. I did that and now everything has a white powdery film... What did I get wrong?

Thanks for your help.

[Tilia]

I know nothing about using baking soda as detergent... However, I cleaned my dishwasher with too much baking soda. It left a white residue on the dishes for a lot of loads after that. I started putting about 1/2 cup white vinegar in the rinse cycle and it cleared up. Supposedly borax helps too.

[avendesora]

You might get more responses in the Natural Home & Body Care section.

I've struggled with dishwasher stuff. Either I get too much film on my stainless steel ware, or my dishes don't get clean. At this point, I use a meager 1 tsp regular detergent in the normal dispenser space, 1 Tbs baking soda sprinkled at the bottom, and vinegar in the rinse thing (it needs to be refilled very often).

Every once in a while I have to do a load with a 'normal' amount of regular detergent because my coffe/tea cups have gotten too brown.

Good luck!
Aven

[thomlynn]

We did that too and I had to let the dishes soak in a hot water and vinegar bath to get the film off.

We do a little washing soda and a little borax, that was working well while we did it. We've started doing more hand washing to collect the grey water.