I have always had a problem pouring rinse aid into a dishwasher. Now I am starting to think this could be by design. I mean, who benefits if I waste rinse aid? The same guys who designed the bottle and spout.

If you don’t want to overfill and waste the liquid then you have to pour slowly. This is because it is hard to see how close to full the dispenser is,until it is full. At the same time it is very hard to pour rinse aid slowly without spilling because of the tiny hole and the fact that rinse aid is watery. As soon as you tip the bottle you get a spurt out, then it has to stop to breathe in and then it spurts out, etc. This spurting makes it very hard to aim and very easy to miss the hole.

At first I thought I was just doing it wrong and maybe someone had created a video of the correct way. The first video I found was by Sears. Even the person making that video couldn’t pour the rinse aid without spilling it outside the fill cup. Then they wiped up the spill. The instructions on the bottle of every brand specifically mentions wiping up any spills. If spills are that common it seems to point to a bad design.

Of course you could pour the rinse aide into something smaller like a measuring cup, and then pour from that into the fill cup, but then you are wasting the liquid that coats the measuring cup, and you have one more thing to wash.

My approach now is to screw the cap off of the bottle and pour the rinse aid directly from the neck of the bottle. This works pretty well, except when the bottle is full. A full bottle is still a challenge because the cup is recessed into a large flat door and there is no easy way to get the neck of a tall full bottle down close to the cup. This especially true for people like me who get dishwasher rinse aid at Costco where the bottle is even taller than normal.

Now I save the last empty rinse aid bottle and I refill it part way from the new full bottle. I can tip the half full bottle almost to horizontal and get the neck down to the fill cup without spilling. Nothing is wasted and nothing extra to wash.