To keep smelly kitchen odor at bay and ensure appliance workhorses run smoothly, Whirlpool has introduced a new dishwasher and disposal cleaner called affresh. (That seems to be the trend these days to use all lowercase letters.) They say it’s the only national two-in-one cleaner for dishwashers and garbage disposals. Now, if you are like me, cleaning your dishwasher is probably not anywhere near the top of your to-do list and you may not care about this at all. But according to most cleaning experts, they need cleaning about once a month. And the makers of affresh say even though you scrape or pre-rinse your dishes, minerals from your water can still calcify and build up, leading to odor.

affresh is certainly easy enough to use. For the dishwasher, you just put a tablet in each of the detergent trays or in the bottom of the dishwasher. They were too big for my trays, so I put one in the bottom of the dishwasher. Make sure the dishwasher is empty and then turn it on. It’s recommended that you put one in your disposal at the same time. I liked the smell — very clean and lemony. But it’s hard to tell how much cleaner affresh made either of them.

The bottom line: affresh is easy to use, smells good and is safe for septic tanks. Of course, I’ve heard so are lemon and ice cubes for your disposal and vinegar for your dishwasher. But affresh is very easy and convenient. The suggested retail price is $5.99 for a package of six. They are available at major home appliance dealers and www.affresh.com.

Lifestyles reporter Sylvia Anderson

may be reached at sylviaanderson@npgco.com.