Oh, you're exactly right Cynic. And I do go for long spells of not using the dishwasher. Right now I am in the "use dishwasher spell". I think there is a tiny bit of time saved by ... say glasses.. where you give it a quick splash to rinse out the milk. Then, several glasses accumulate in the dw, so then in order to accumulate enough in the dw to merit running it, I start adding other things over a period of a few days (but they would need more thorough cleaning than a spash before putting the dw... according to my compulsion. LOL) I could easily live without the dw with just dh & I here. But it is nice when the "kids" come to visit.

this whole flammable pj issue is such a crock, IMHO. if your kid is in the crib during a fire, he's going to die of smoke inhalation not his pj's catching on fire. if he's running around the house, reaching across the candle you've left burning, he should be wearing his jammies, so he won't catch on fire?? what?? what if it's midday? do we not protect them then? yes, we do! we don't burn candles where they can reach, or pull on top of themselves, or maybe not at all. my DD is 14, so when she was a baby the laws were different. there was no exception for close-fitting cotton pj's. there was no exception for under 6mo. we had a heck of a time finding cotton clothes for the kid, and she sweat like a pig when dressed in poly. i'd say wash your kids clothes the way that works best for your/their noses and skin. keep your smoke detectors working. practice reasonable safety practices (ya know, like not letting the 3 yr old play with the lit candle). i'm sure you can think of something better to worry about than your kids' pj flammability (just in case you really need something to worry about)!

HOMEMADE LIQUID LAUNDRY DETERGENT 4 cups hot water 1 Ivory or Sunlight bar soap 1 cup washing soda 1/2 cup Borax Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan of hot water. Stir constantly over medium-low heat until soap is all melted. Fill a 5-gallon pail 1/2 full of hot water. Add melted soap, washing soda and borax. Stir well until the powder is dissolved. Fill bucket with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight. The next morning the pail will be all gelled and very thick. Stir with a stick to break it up. Fill a laundry jug half-full of the detergent, and top with more water. Shake before each use. Use 1/2 cup for top-load machines, and 1/4 for front-load. Use the thickened, undiluted soap as a pre-treater.

What I meant was... you could replace the Sodium Carbonate in the formula with OxyClean. And yes.. certain formulations of OxyClean Powder do contain TAED. I can't give you the skus & names on the top of my head.. but I know they are out there. And of course.. you could omit the Sodium Chloride, but I'd prefer to leave it in.. just so it'd be easier to dose. I wouldn't want something super, super concentrated. I'm not too sure.. this is something I would pursue, but I have experimented with making homemade dishwasher detergent. I actually did have something quite *good* that functioned well in hard water, however.. it would cause sudsing in soft water. Then another formula of mine was Sodium Chloride, STPP, Sodium Carbonate, Sodium Metasilicate, Sodium Hydroxide and Sodium dichloro-s-triazinetrione. It performed extremely well, but was very uneconomical and was missing a built in rinse agent I couldn't figure out how to properly add. ^If I could somehow obtain enough volume to order in Bulk, I'd definitely have something there...