My bottle of Tide HE liquid says to fill to line 2 for medium loads. This 2.95 liter bottle will wash 52 loads if filled to line 2. I'm just saying that if Tide was consciously telling you to use double what is really required, they would be much better off telling you to fill to line 1 and then labeling the bottle as able to wash 104 loads. That looks much better on the shelf sitting next to its competitors that only wash half as many loads per bottle. 2.95 liters = 200 tablespoons 200 tablespoons / 52 loads = ~4.0 tbsp/load If I cut that dosage in half, to 2 tbsp, that is not enough to get clothes clean in my 4.0 cuft machine in soft water. Even Persil Megaperls recommends just over 4 tbsp (65 ml) for a medium sized, normally soiled load in soft water. Tide's recommendations are pretty much in line with what's expected - not more, not less. I use the recommended amount of detergent (Tide, Persil, Vaska, etc) but reduce by 50% if washing towels. Towels generate a lot of suds when spun out, and reducing dosage for towels does not negatively impact cleaning since they aren't that dirty to begin with. For 80% of my laundry, however, I follow the dosage instructions on the package without any problems. There is great debate on how much is enough, and certainly water chemistry and load size has a lot to do with this. However, from what I've read, it seems that using too little detergent leads to more problems than if using too much.

Ooooh! Love the website, Lukkiirish! I most definitely would consider black. My husbands sports paraphernalia has mostly black framing, so that would be perfect. I have to refinish his desk, so maybe a flat black distressed finish would work there. I can always play around with wall color once the trim is finished. And, WOW, Sandy! That is an amazing use of color. It looks great and I love your doors. You have given me a wonderful idea now for our mudroom. I'll be sure to post pictures when I am finished. I do have to wait for the electrician to finish here, so it may be awhile. Thank you both for the ideas!

Naw, just struggling over finding a paint color for my house. Read a funny post from a blogger in reference to the question "have you ever house stalked before" a reader said "yes, and I think beside everyone's name and address in the phone book should be the make and paint number of their house color." To funny!

If you use MS Office 2003, you should have MS Office Picture Manager. Chose this to open your jpg (photo) file. Once it opens, at the top menu, select "Picture". Depends on how large your photos are, you can either chose "Compress" and/or "Resize" to make the photo smaller size. Then, save it to another name. When I have a 1.5 MB size photos, I normally do both, compress first then, resize. Here's step-by-step instruction: 1) Open file in MS Office Picture Manager 2) Select Picture\Compress 3) Right side menu gives 3 choices: Documents, Web Pages, E-mails. )Chose one and you'll see the size it compress it into. You can do "Edit\undo..." if you don't like it). I normally select Documents, and hit "OK" at the bottom of the menu. 4) Select Picture\Resize 5) Easiest choice is to do a "Percentage". I normally, resize from 60% and up. Again, you can play around with the different percentage to give you some idea and if you don't like it, do Edit\Undo. 6) Save or Save as your photo. This tool also allows you to compress and/or resize multiple photos and Save All at the same time. Select the Thumbnail icon to do multiple photos. Be careful not to Resize too much; otherwise, your photos loses quality. I also use this tool to "crop" the photos. If you use crop, do this before doing compress/resize. I've been busy and haven't check back this forum as often, so e-mail me if you have any questions. Good luck and have fun! Natalie