A LIMERICK man whose tweet about his dishwasher went viral has received a free 10-year supply of dishwasher tablets, and is planning to help some local charities with the prize.

Over 3,000 Sun dishwasher tablets were delivered to Mike McLoughlin’s home - enough for a wash every day for a decade - after he tweeted that he spent 10 years in the dark about his own dishwasher.

Mike’s tweet was about the revelation that after a decade living in his house, he realised that you can raise the upper shelf of the dishwasher to fit the bigger plates down below. The tweet quickly went viral, garnering more than 85,000 likes and 14,000 retweets.

“I moved into this house in 2008. It always annoyed me that the lower level of the dishwasher wasn’t tall enough to fit my biggest dinner plates. Been handwashing them all this time. This week I discovered you can raise the upper shelf and all my plates fit fine. TEN F*****G YEARS,” the tweet read.

Thousands of people admitted that they didn’t know the trick, with one man saying that he has been putting in his plates at an angle for nearly 20 years.

After an appearance on RTE Radio 1, Sun reached out to offer Mike the huge crate of dishwasher tablets.

And this week, he tweeted: “Guys! I’ve just had 3,600 dishwasher tablets delivered to my house!

“Enough to run a wash every night for the ten years I wasted handwashing!”

Guys! I’ve just had 3600 dishwasher tablets delivered to my house! (enough to run a wash every night for the ten years I wasted handwashing)!!! Thanks Sun Expert @unilever! @UnileverUKI !! @RadioRayRTE pic.twitter.com/l9YrTmKQ7C — Mike Mc Loughlin (@zuroph) February 14, 2018

Now Mike plans to donate some boxes to local charities that make use of a dishwasher themselves.

“I’m going to see about dropping some around to a few charities at the weekend, and then share with friends, etc. No point trying to store them for ten years,” he told the Limerick Leader.

Since the original tweet, Mike has been featured on radio stations and in newspapers around the world, from New Zealand and Australia to Russia to Nigeria.

“I’m just having a laugh at it all. I put up a self deprecating tweet to laugh at myself. But it turns out loads of other people had missed it too, and it spread like wildfire,” he told the Limerick Leader.

The local dad has given interviews with RTÉ, the BBC and even to a radio station in Dubai.

The tweet started to get likes straight away, but Mike said that it started spreading to a wider audience when comedian Pat Shortt retweeted in the first 20 minutes.

“It’s two types of people are retweeting, those laughing at me, and those who genuinely had no idea. I’m getting so many people sending photos of their dishwashers, it’s so weird,” he said.