As a rule of thumb, it’s good to clean that filter roughly every month. Since you’re using rinse aid, I recommend just cleaning the filter every time you top that off. To minimize how much the filter catches, give dishes a little rinse before loading to at least knock off the bigger stuff.

There are a few things that most people don’t know to do for optimal dishwasher effectiveness:

• Don’t use pods. Ideally use dry detergent, but liquid is good too. You have no control over pods.
• Don’t cram it full. Give everything space and have it all face down and/or toward the center where the jets of water will come from.
• Don’t put big shit in there that will block the spinning arms from spinning.
• Put a little detergent on the detergent door for a little assistance in the rinse cycle.
• You probably don’t need to fill the detergent door (unless you’re doing a heavy load of stubborn shit), and overdosing the detergent could be contributing to cloudiness on your dishes. Obviously, close the detergent lid. If not, you’re throwing all of your detergent away in the initial rinse cycle.
• Run hot water through your kitchen sink until it feels hot before you start your dishwasher. Your machine doesn’t use much water, so it might just grab cold water from the pipes instead of hot water from your water heater if you don’t do this. And everybody knows that hot water is better for cleaning most things.
• The dishwasher takes like 3-4 goddamn hours to run, but it uses way less water and soap than if you handwashed that shit yourself, plus it can run while you work or sleep.
• Most things can go in the dishwasher. The only stuff I don’t run through there are knives, my cast iron cookware (including Dutch ovens because they’re just cast iron coated in enamel), and things that explicitly say that they’re not dishwasher safe.

Follow those simple steps and your dishwasher will work better and you’ll feel like you reclaimed a bunch of time compared to handwashing or rerunning the dishwasher.