Just as some dishwashers have soft food disposers in them (i.e., KA) you wouldn't put lemon wedges from glasses of ice tea or chicken and potato skins from dinner in the dishwasher, would you?Many people DO put such food scraps in their dishwasher, *because* it has a food disposer, even though they're not intended to take large quantities of such material. As for "disposable" plastics ... I routinely use butter-bowls and such for leftovers, and have never had an "incident" with them in my dishwasher (other than flipping and left filled with water/debris). The only damage I've had to plastic was a Mr. Coffee teamaker pitcher that warped in the bottom rack of a Frigidaire dishwasher that had a nuclear-powered, exposed heating element, LOL. I should have known better, but at the time I was used to my parents KitchenAid that had a non-exposed heating element with fan-forced drying and overlooked the difference.

I've had the KUDE70FVPA, purchased for its quiet rating, for nearly three years. I've let the filter cleaning go for months at a time, although when I get to it I do note the slime you refer to. Yes, it's rather gross but it doesn't seem to impact the performance or the apparent cleanliness of the dishes. Make sure you've got the drain path setup properly/optimally on installation. Once I noticed water pooling in the bottom after a cycle, and it turned out that food debris was plugging up the drain line at the air gap (so the smaller food chunks to egress and don't all end up as slime on the filter). I've since stepped up the reminders to the teenagers in the house to scrape their dishes into the trash a bit more thoroughly. The dishwasher is wonderfully quiet and does a pretty good job with the dishes. I don't miss the grinder function. BTW, we went with the model we did with the control panel on the top of the door in order to put a cabinet-matching face for the front panel. It really disappears into the cabinetry, even when running, because it's so quiet and camouflaged :-).

I had been using Cascade with Dawn Gel from Sams and was told that was the trouble. I also found out that most time with that problem it is the chopper that is bad. I took mine apart and it was fine. Then a tech I asked told me it was probably the pump/motor. I decided to use the Sani Rinse one day to see if it would help get rid of the bits and after that I noticed it was better. I kept using that for a while(I normally never use sani)and the cleaning got better. I believe the gel had stopped the pump or a pipe up and that was the trouble and the hotter water and powder detergent helped clean it out. When washing it also seemed like it didn't have much pressure because the dishes were not always clean, and they had been before, and sometimes the gel was still in the cup(partly) and bits all over the door. It is OK for now--so I DO NOT use Cascade gel anymore. I know some people here have said they didn't like GE dishwashers but I had one for 16-17 years with no problems and it cleaned better and faster than this Kenmore. I would have gotten another GE when I bought this KM but at the time they didn't have SS tub GE in anything but the Monogram line and I didn't want that, although now the newer GE's may be junk. The one I had would flip over large plastic bowls on the top rack but this KM wouldn't do that even on the bottom when it was new! Good Luck with the KAid. I bet you will love it.

OMG, those cat pics are priceless . . . I'll be chuckling the rest of the day! I wish we could get a cat but both my kids, and most of my siblings and their kids are allergic to cats. What would this be called . . . Murphy's Law? The morning after I posted my response here, I walked into our laundry room closet to start a load of clothes and there in the always-present mousetrap was a dead mouse! It's been half a year since one got in there and, darn it, of course it had to happen right after DH had left for work! I could do no laundry until DH got home from work that evening at 7:30PM to get it out of there, because (sigh) there is no way I'm touching a dead mouse! I was a real tomboy growing up and still have a lot of it left in me. As a room-parent, I thought nothing of hunting down and grabbing the class's wayward 3ft bull snake that periodically managed to escape it's big cage. I still routinely rescue large tarantulas and carry them to safety in my hands. In my mind, they're just gentle little misunderstood giants. So why is it that when I see a dead mouse, I totally flip out? Not a live one, mind you, that would be more logical, but those don't bother me at all. Only the dead ones bother me. I have a real dead-mouse phobia for some unknown reason. I don't ever recall even seeing a dead mouse until we moved out here to New Mexico. Apparently my childhood home never had any . . . at least that my parents told me about. And it's not the death specifically, because seeing dead birds, animals, bugs or whatever doesn't bother me; I just feel sad for them. But seeing a dead mouse in a trap hits me hard. It's like something knocks the breath right out of me and I stand there gasping for air. It's only in the past couple of years that I've managed to not holler out loud~ once I catch my breath again~ when I see one. What I need in a mousetrap is one that kills the mouse instantly (because I truly don't want it to suffer); that is some kind of longish, opaque box that holds the dead mouse inside the box where I can't see it and don't have to touch it; that has some sort of signal (like the red flag that goes up on a mailbox when you get mail) so that I know there's one to dispose of . . . and that allows me to simply touch a button to release the mouse into a (NOT! see thru) sack. Can someone please invent one like that? I'll take a dozen! Lynn PS: A funny now, but not funny then mouse story: years ago DH, the dead mouse disposer in our family, thought it would be much more sanitary to seal a dead mouse in a small ziploc bag and store it "out of sight" in our (attached )garage's upright freezer until trash day. Bad, bad, bad idea! I found it while searching for a package of ground beef later that day. Let me tell you that for someone with a dead mouse phobia, finding one in your freezer, and actually grabbing the bag to see what it was is even more (much, much more!) traumatic than seeing one in a trap! Luckily for me (NOT for him, though!), it was a weekend and he was home. My blood curdling scream and tirade that followed convinced him that our freezer was NOT a good place to store dead mice ever again! Funny now in the telling, but I still shudder when I think about touching that baggie!