My dishwasher is about six years old and the utensil basket is starting to break. I suppose the force from kids dropping the utensils in rather than placing them in gently is causing the bottom of the basket to come apart or break in places. (Okay, I admit I probably drop them in sometimes too.)
I came up with a simple solution for this problem. My husband is a handyman and I knew he had some cable ties
The difficult part was working with the inside bottom of the basket. There were times when I was trying to manipulate the ties inside the basket and wished that my hands were smaller. However, in the end it worked out.
I used ties at two places. In one place the bottom piece of the basked had become detached at the edge and heavy utensils would push through. The cable tie holds that bottom piece in place well enough to keep that from happening.
In another spot, a piece was broken out leaving a hole that allowed almost any utensil to fall through. It was also detached at the bottom.
In this case, the cable tie holds the bottom up and spans the gap preventing utensils from falling through.
You can purchase cable ties
I thought it was funny that last week my friend Toni posted the same tip.
If you have a kitchen tip to share, send me an email.
See, my dishwasher utensil basket is fine, it’s just the individual prong-things (whatever they’re called) that separate dishes in the rack that break off, one by one. It’s like the latex covering on them cracks, allows water inside, and then they rust off. I keep thinking that if enough of them break, I’ll HAVE to get a new dishwasher – preferably one that doesn’t make so much racket!
I had a dishwasher once where the coating wore off the tips of the prongs and would rust. I found some plastic tip covers that worked well. I don’t know if it would help you any. If the coating is only cracking on the tip it might keep the rest of the prong from rusting. I think they might also sell coating that you can brush on. Then again, maybe you would rather let it be and get a new dishwasher a little sooner. 🙂
I used this hack as well but please be careful as eventually those plastic ties will break and probably end up near the internal food grinder (along with other food particles that don’t grind (i.e. popcorn kernels, shrimp tails, etc). I actually had to repair my dishwasher because one of these ties. Make it a habit to replace them every 6 months