Washing Soda for the Dishwasher

**Note: I don't do this anymore. After I made my own "homemade" dishwasher soap my DW mysteriously began leaking. Now I know that doesn't happen to all, but I am not going to play around with it anymore!

I wrote about washing soda a while back.

I had heard that it helps stretch dishwasher detergent. I tested this the other day. We have extremely hard water here and our dishes don't look wonderful. In fact sometimes I have to rewash my glass that I use because my chapstick seems to stick to the glass.

1. I put this glass in the bottom of my dishwasher with chapstick gunk on it.
2. When it was full, I filled the dishwasher with Cascade Complete and ran the dishwasher. Result - glass with gunk on it, but it was worse than normal (spots).
3. Then I mixed Cascade Complete with Washing Soda, put my glass in the same spot and when the dishwasher was full, I ran the dishwasher.
4. Result - glass had a bit of gunk on it, but it was better than it was.

I know this isn't a scientific test, but I wanted to make sure that Washing Soda didn't cause problems. I found that if anything it helped my gunky glass. I'll happily keep mixing Washing Soda with Cascade to save a few bucks!

You can buy Washing Soda on Alice.com or at a local store (I haven't had luck finding it at the big chain type grocery stores though!)