[Reason077]

Smelly "dishwasher smell" on your dishes is usually fixed by cleaning out the filters in my experience, and ensuring the dishwasher is actually loaded properly.

In particular, it's critical to ensure the washing arms can rotate freely, something my flatmates (some of whom are engineers) will never understand no matter how many times I try to explain it to them! Otherwise the dishes will come out looking clean-ish but actually smelly and not properly clean.

[Tao332]

Heh, I ran out of detergent not that long ago and had to improvise some with an Internet Recipe of baking soda and a few drops of dish soap. Some of plastics came out with a bit of chalky water marks, but the dishwasher itself was completely odorless for the first time. Filed it away in my memory to run some baking soda every now and then.

[Reason077]

Oh, if you're in a hard water area (like many parts of the UK), it really helps to use salt! Where I grew up we never used salt because the water wasn't hard, but in London (for example) it makes a massive difference.

All dishwashers seem to have a reservoir for salt but of course people only tend to use it in regions where it's needed.