asolo (on July 10) upbraids herring_maven's response (of July 10): "'We fill the cup to about 2/3....' Which 'cup'? What machine? Would you mind telling us how much detergent that is, please? Teaspoons? Tablespoons? Something we can relate to?" The detergent fill cups on every dishwasher, independent of brand, that I have ever seen are all (within +/- ten percent or so) the same size. Are you aware of any outliers? We have never used a teaspoon to dispense dishwasher powder into the dishwasher cup of our Miele G848, We have never used a Tablespoon to dispense dishwasher powder into the dishwasher cup of our Miele G848, We therefore do not relate to teaspoons or to Tablespoons in relation to dishwasher powder quantity. We gauge the adequacy of fill in relationship to how much of the dishwasher's cup is filled; that is our measure of how much we use. Sometimes (but rarely) we pour Ecover powder directly from the box into the cup of our Miele G848. More commonly, we use a long-handled standard coffee scoop to transport the powder from the box to the dishwasher. A standard coffee scoop is 1/8 cup; a full (level) coffeescoopful will not quite fill the detergent cup on our dishwasher. A slightly less-than-full coffeescoopful will fill the dishwasher's cup to about 3/4 capacity, and we use a bit less than that, to fill the dishwasher's cup to about 2/3 capacity.

My research has revealed another laundry detergent product which contains natural soap and is formulated for soft water. I have not tried this particular product, so I can't really endorse it, however those of you with soft water having similar issues may want to give it a try and report back: Seafoam Laundry Soap LanoSoft and Seafoam both contain natural soap, not detergent. The difference is that natural soap contains all the glycerin it was originally born with, whereas detergents have removed all the glycerin (which fetches a higher price when sold on its own) and substituted less expensive chemicals. The big caveat here is that natural soap IS NOT good to use if you have hard water, as the glycerin will bind with the calcium carbonate to create a fatty precipitate that will stick to your tub. However, in very soft water conditions this is not an issue as there is no calcium or magnesium to bond with. The presence of glycerin also explains why the laundry is soft without need for fabric softener. The glycerin acts as an emollient for the fabric, conditioning it and allowing it to retain just enough moisture to have a natural softness. I was hesitant to use a product that contains "natural soap", and advised against it previously because it can cause problems in hard water. But for those who have close to zero hardness or have whole house ion exchange softeners, the natural soap thoroughly cleans and allows the fabrics to retain a high degree of softness. My kitchen towels are so fluffy that I can barely fit them all into the drawer! I find that Vaska suds a lot unless you use very little. Unfortunately, then it doesn't clean very well. So again we have the suds vs. clean tradeoff that is often a thorn in many people's sides.

For kitchen & cleaning towels I don't decrease the detergent, but they usually aren't big suds-producers. For bath towels (which can generate a lot of suds) I go with the 1/2 dose rule even with Persil Megaperls because, as someone stated, they usually don't get that dirty and I'm washing them on hot anyway which helps the cleaning no matter what. You mentioned Vaska -- I had commented in another thread a while back about that detergent. I found it to be *extremely* sudsy, almost as if it wasn't an HE detergent or they'd left out some critical anti-foaming element of it. And this was made hugely worse if you had a washer with an internal heater (like the Nexxt 500 you and I both have!) which just turned the suds into a hot foam that was very difficult to rinse out. This was especially bad with towels since they suds up a lot anyway. Switching to Persil and dropping the dosage helped get rid of my suds issues. In general I've found the Nexxt 500 can really bring out the suds during a rinse cycle, possibly due to the big paddles and significant wash action which just whips 'em up again, so I always use Rinse Plus and Bleach options. The Bleach option just adds another rinse if you leave the dispenser empty, as near as I can tell. Good luck!

Powder is best because it contains washing soda(sodium carbonate), sodium carbonate is excellent for softening water. The problem with powder is you have to use warm/hot water to dissolve it, the problem with liquid is they don't have a high pH. That's why I use Oxi Clean powder when doing whites and liquid for colors. You can make you own detergent booster, add 1/2 cup of Borax or washing soda to a load. Borax has a pH of 9.5 and washing soda has a pH of 11, even a 1/2 cup of baking soda(pH 8) will soften and deodorize. Chlorine bleach is bad for septic systems because it kills the good bacteria and it will contaminate the effluent. Baking soda and washing soda are non-toxic while the jury is still out on Borax. Ecover and Ecos detergent are all-natural but hard to find in stores. This post was edited by moviegeek on Fri, Jan 30, 15 at 14:32