I don't imagine that will stop anyone from using it, but thanks for the warning. I find it interesting that you store clean dishes in yours. I empty my dishwasher right away because it is attach to the sewer and I don't want to take a chance on contaminating them. LOL

I had that problem but it was our water.

Thanks to the "greenies" who push through idiot laws without thinking things through.

They've done it to it to fuel (turned out to be worse for the environment than the original, now detergents (wait and see) and lighting (all that mercury to find a safe way to dispose of). Washers wash at lower temps and detergents have removed phosphates also. People complain their laundry is dingy. Well duh.

Knee jerk reactions based on emotions over over real science and common sense. Make law first, fix later. Dumb.

I thought they took phosphates out of detergents years ago. I pretty sure they took it out of laundry detergents sometime in the 70's. It IS a pollutant to our waters and I, for one, would rather have clear lakes and rivers.

(sigh)...and there's the overreaction by the hysterical.

"...(all that mercury to find a safe way to dispose of)"...
That's a totally uninformed and misleading comment. How do you safely dispose of the mercury from a coal-fired power plant? Oh that's right, dump it into the air! No problem there. The fact is that the little bit of mercury in CFLs is far offset by the mercury produced by the coal-fired power plants producing electricity to burn incandescent. Truth be told, CFLs have a far smaller "mercury imprint" than do incandescent, even though incands don't have any mercury in them, but they produce mercury into the air from the extra electricity needed to burn them. The other myth that is hysterical on the surface but tearfully sad when you think about how mislead and gullible the public is includes the one about you'll develop a black hole by breaking a bulb (another one that's been debunked). This phobia over CFLs is amusing but sad like I said. People really need to be more educated.

I've never had need for that many phosphates so I'm not mourning their loss. My dishes get clean, my laundry gets clean and I have cut my electric bill significantly by converting most of my lighting to CFL and fluorescent over the years. But I'm also not one of the lunatic "greenies" who screams like chicken little over a little mercury. I broke thermometers before. I recall working with mercury in junior high school and I'm alive and kicking decades later. Amazing how that could happen with the people screaming that a little mercury is going to end the world.

I have some used, burned out fluorescent bulbs in my house that I'm storing. I have no way of safely disposing them. They are safe, no chance they'll fall over and break. I'm not too concerned with phosphates in detergents. They were banned about 40 years ago. Now dishwasher detergent contains enzymes, which seem to clean fine for me.

I noticed this about a month ago and thought it was my water. I took the advice of Consumer Reports and tried Finsih Quantum. It worked great, no cloudiness at all. I am using my remaining Cascade when I need to soak a really dirty pan in the sink.

I have hard water. We have a water softener and I use an additive - Jet Dry - in my dishwasher. My glasses come out pretty good.

Wildchild, I've sent you a message via your page.

I read an interesting article in our local newspaper. It said you should not rinse your dishes, just scrape off the big stuff. The reason being a dirty dish with residue on it will give the soap something to cling to and you get cleaner dishes. Other wise your dishes will be spotty and cloudy.

Jannie, just take the CFLs to a place like Home Depot, Lowe's, even many small hardware stores will handle the disposal for you. Check your local stores and use one that accepts them when you shop there.

Yes, I just took my burnt out CFL light bulb to Home Depot today. It didn't take long for it to burn out and the ones DH put in drive me nuts because they give off such an ugly light. One at the bottom of the stairs makes the house look like a creepy mental institution in an old horror movie with it's dim, yellow 4llight. We changed it to a "daylight" one and it's brighter but still not enough light. UGH.

I've also read that your dishwasher will clean better if your dishes are not clean.

Rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher can do more harm than good.

Today's advanced detergents are designed to attack food particles left on dishes. "If there isn't food soil, they tend to attack glasses," says Edwards. "Some glasses are more susceptible to this kind of attacking than others."

The detergent etches small pits in glasses that you can't see with the naked eye, but the glass appears cloudy, according to Edwards. The process is called "etching" and causes permanent damage.