Ways You Can Use Your Dishwasher For Things You Never Expected

Dishwashers are one of the easiest ways to keep your kitchen clean without having to spend hours every week hunched over the sink scrubbing away at your dishes. There’s a reason around 80 million households globally have dishwashers, and that number will continue to rise as more countries develop and give disposable income and a steady water supply to their citizens. 

Despite widespread use that dishwashers are great for washing dishes, there is a lack of knowledge about all of the other great things that dishwashers can do. Read on for four dishwasher hacks that go far beyond your typical conception of what a dishwasher can do.

Wash Your Toothbrush

We use toothbrushes to wash out our mouths twice a day, but how often do we wash our toothbrushes? Considering we use them for months at a time, get them wet, keep them in our bathrooms, and sometimes even travel with them, toothbrushes can accumulate plenty of bacteria, and we then put that bacteria into our mouths when we brush. 

This isn’t the best idea, and while we could change our toothbrushes every month or so, this is pretty wasteful. With that in mind, we should take efforts to sanitize our toothbrushes from time to time, and a great way to do this is in the dishwasher. You shouldn’t add any dish soap, just put the brushes in the cutlery rack and put the dishwasher on its rapid wash program. With the hot water and steam, any harmful bacteria on your brush will be destroyed. 

Steam Shrimp In A Jar

Dishwashers are the best way to clean up after cooking and eating, but could they also be a good way to cook? In fact, they are actually effective for certain techniques, and they are excellent when it comes to steaming seafood. This is an especially great way to do it if you are making a lot of food and don’t have the stove space for the extra dish you were planning.

To do this, get a glass jar that you can fully seal, and put the shrimp inside. Run a quick rinsing cycle, and you’ll find that our shrimp will come out perfectly at the end. It’s an easy and fun way to get an additional side in for a dinner party. While you could keep the cooking method to yourself, it definitely makes for an interesting story.

Make Your Baseball Caps Feel Like New

Baseball caps are among those clothing items that tend to hold sentimental value and that you don’t want to replace even when they become worn down. Even though you can wash off the sweat and grime that accumulates from heavy use, the unfortunate fact is that they lose their crispness over time, and putting them in the washing machine will just accelerate that. If only there were a way to make them feel like new. Surprisingly, the way to do that is by putting them through the dishwasher. 

Don’t just toss it in with your dishes, but put them in and let the cycle run with just a little bit of a gentle detergent, otherwise you may see the color on them fade. When they come out, they will feel so crisp you won’t believe they are new. It is sort of like putting them in the washing machine, except they aren’t bouncing around and getting smothered, damaging them in the process.

Wash Out Your Hairbrushes

The shape and material of hairbrushes that makes them so useful to brush our hair with also makes them incredibly difficult to clean. Considering they get full of hair, dust, oil, and possibly bacteria, this is pretty unfortunate, and if you try washing them by hand you’ll probably just end up breaking them.

Yet again, the dishwasher comes in handy here. With hot water and steam, the dishwasher is an easy and effective way to get them sparkly clean. Make sure the material is good to use in a dishwasher, and obviously don’t run it with other dishes or soap. Do a bunch of your brushes at once to make good use of the cycle, and you’ll be good to go with a like new collection to brush your hair with.