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With many of us spending more time at home, and fewer meals out to lighten the load, doing the dishes can feel relentless.
Whether you prefer to use a dishwasher or wash by hand, our six easy tips will ensure cleaning up is as easy and stress-free as possible.
They'll also save you time and effort, as you won't need to wash anything twice or have to put up with unattractively cloudy glasses.
If it's time for a replacement, our in-depth tests have found great Best Buy dishwashers from £240.
Dishwasher salt keeps the water softener working. This is vital to prevent cloudy glasses and makes sure the detergent works well.
If your dishwasher doesn't have a refill light, aim to refill roughly every month (depending on how often you use it).
While not strictly necessary in the same way salt is, rinse aid reduces the surface tension of water, helping everything come up dry, as well as helping to prevent ugly water marks.
The rinse aid compartment can usually be found next to where you add the detergent.
Dishwasher salt and rinse aid explained
The filter sits at the bottom of the dishwasher - cleaning it weekly will prevent food waste that has become trapped from ending up back on your dishes.
To remember to clean your filter, get in the habit of having a quick look at the filter (which you can do without removing it) whenever you pull out the lower rack. That way you can check if there's a build-up of debris.
Get a full run-down of what to do in our guide to how to clean your dishwasher
Mastering your controls will give you more flexibility when using your dishwasher.
Understanding it means that you can wash things in your dishwasher that you didn't think you could before, or get it to wash at a convenient time for you.
In addition to using the normal program, try using these:
For more, in-depth information, check out our dishwasher programs explained guide.
If you don't load your dishwasher right, you could find dirty dishes at the end of your wash.
We know that loading the dishwasher is itself a chore, but it's worth taking just a little more time to get it right as it will save you time later.
For more tips read our guide on how to load your dishwasher.
For all the stuff that can't go in the dishwasher, a good washing-up liquid (and music you can dance to while washing-up) will make the cleaning up that bit easier.
These can include particularly dirty items like non-stick pans, knives, wooden items, Le Creuset, and insulated mugs and bottles.
Our testing has found washing-up liquids that will have you scrubbing and scrubbing to get tough grime off.
While we've found others that cut through grease and will have your dishes clean in no time.
Read our washing-up liquid reviews to see how Fairy compares with supermarket-own washing-up liquids from Aldi, Sainsbury's and Morrisons.