The dishwasher is the appliance most often skipped during turnover cleaning, and it is the one new tenants complain about first. Here is how to clean, test, and document it properly.
Turnover cleaning crews reliably hit the oven, the refrigerator, and the bathroom. The dishwasher gets a wipe on the front panel and a door swung shut. That is a mistake, because the dishwasher is the appliance a new tenant tests on day one, and a stale smell or a rack full of white film reads as "this unit was not cleaned" no matter how spotless the rest of the kitchen is.
It is also an appliance with a real service life on the line. Most in-unit dishwashers in Chicago rental buildings are builder-grade units running eight to twelve years. A clogged filter and scaled spray arms will cut that short and hand you an unplanned replacement in the middle of a busy October 1 turnover season. Twenty minutes of proper cleaning between tenants protects both the first impression and the capital budget.
Nearly every dishwasher built in the last fifteen years has a removable cylindrical filter in the floor of the tub, usually a coarse mesh cup that twists out and a flat fine screen underneath it. Pull both. In a unit that has just come off a two-year tenancy, expect a compacted layer of food debris, broken glass, produce stickers, and grease.
Rinse the mesh under hot water, scrub it with a soft brush and dish soap, and let it drain. While the filter is out, reach into the sump below and clear anything sitting in the well by hand. This is where the odor lives. A dishwasher that smells sour after sitting empty in a vacant Logan Square or Rogers Park apartment for three weeks almost always has a loaded sump, not a mechanical problem. Reseat the filter fully and confirm it locks — a loose filter lets debris into the pump.
Chicago and most of the surrounding suburbs draw from Lake Michigan, and while that water is cleaner than a lot of the country's supply, it still runs moderately hard. Over a few years those dissolved minerals build a chalky scale inside spray arm ports, and a partly blocked arm is why dishes come out with grit still on them.
Lift or unclip the lower spray arm — most twist off or release with a single nut — and hold it up to the light. If ports look narrowed or crusted, soak the arm in a shallow pan of white vinegar for twenty minutes, then clear each hole with a toothpick or a bent paperclip. Do the same for the upper arm and the small ceiling jet if the unit has one. In older Lakeview and Andersonville buildings where dishwashers were retrofitted into vintage kitchens decades after the building went up, scale tends to be worse because supply lines are longer and older.
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