I have owned my current dishwasher for about 15 years, and I have never once cleaned it. It's working just fine.

Some dishwashers have a built-in grinder (similar to garbage disposal units). Yours might be one of those.

At 15 years old it probably does have the grinder. They starting going away about then though, so hard to say without doing more digging than I care to.

Conversely, my wife insists on not pre-rinsing the dishes and that filter gets real gross, real quick. Unless you mean the spinny arms, never cleaned those before.

Next you’ll be telling me she doesn’t pre-rinse the laundry before putting it in the washer!

I guess the best comparison would be, if you have stuff all over your clothes, you'd probably shake the clothes off before putting them in the washer.

EG, I use the 'weed wacker' to cut up stuff, or I am racking leaves, I get pants with plant debris on them. I tend to shake them off first.

That'd be the equivalent of scraping your dishes, not rinsing them

Well, sorta. I find it easier to rince small stuff off, and that doesn't work with fabric really, but your point is fair.

I don't generally have food waste on my clothes though.

you must not have young kids. Food gets everywhere for a while when they are learning to eat.

Giving the filter a quick wash once a week is way less work than pre-rinsing all your dishes.

Presumably plates had the leftovers scraped off into the compost bin before putting into dishwasher anyways.

> need […] once a month, at least

This strikes me as an abuse of the word “need”, in my opinion.

I keep telling my customers that they don't "need" to patch their Internet-facing Windows web servers in the same sense that they don't "need" to replace the oil filters in their car.

Look, yes, you ought to replace the filter every six months to a year, but will your car stop dead the very next day if you don't? No!

It also won't stop the day after, or the day after that. Ergo, by induction, we come to the conclusion that the 2012 R2 server on RTM patch level is not professional negligence.

It's just simple logic.

It’s a difference of degree, doses of magnitude of degrees. In fact, you should patch your serve on the order of years, just the same as your should patch your fridge filter.

Disclaimer: I live in EU.

I don't like cleaning the dishwasher during normal cycles. I don't like eating more chemicals than I have to.

I clean the (German made) dishwasher when it tells me to using products designed for this.

https://shop.rema1000.dk/varer/145820

and

https://www.fjordbutikken.dk/sterling-citronsyre-til-afkalkn...

The first on removes dirt .. mostly fat I think.

The second removes lime using citric acid crystals. You could use vinegar instead I think.

The water hardness has something to do with the amount of salt the dishwasher uses so it needs to be set correctly.

I don't have any issues with the dishwasher.. I had it for 5 years.

I just do a wash with CLR once every year or so.

https://clrbrands.com/Products/CLR-Household/CLR-Calcium-Lim...

This is probably a 'different problem', in that I have hard water, and calcium buildup is a thing here. It also builds on the plates and everything. So.. I do a full load, all dishes, with CLR. Yes, I do a second wash after.

To give an idea, if I put a pot full of water on the stove, and boil it to empty, I'll end up with a solid disc of calcium and other elemets at the bottom, about 1mm thick!

Wow, that's a lot of dry residue on water. I guess that you don't get much foam from soap and/or shampoo.

Do you use filters for drinking water or just bottled water?

I have to use a lot more soap, for example, if I wash my hands, I have to wet them, then soap them up without them being near the water, then after they are very agitated, put them under the water. The soap instantly disappears.

I have a cooler with delivered water. I probably could drink the well water, how much calcium and such does milk have? But I'd have to test it more often.

Our water also contains a lot of calcium.

The cleaning program is probably executed every two months or so. I'm assuming that the dishwasher can sense if the pumps it contains use more energy to pump water (I know pumps that can give the user this info but I think this is an estimate based on some magic numbers from the designers of the motor control software).

It might be also a simple timer. :)

Phosphates keep the dishwasher clean for much longer. I just add the phosphates back to my powder. So much simpler and the environmental concerns have proven to be total bullshit. Phosphates can be managed at the waste water treatment facilities. Unless you are washing dishes in a river, the regulation should happen at the discharge point.