The Dishwasher Detergent Dilemna

Shortly after moving here we installed a Bosch dishwasher.  The drying action of this dishwasher demands a rinse agent so for awhile that had me scrambling to find a low cost rinse agent but I finally found one.  Finding a good dishwasher detergent has been a horse of another colour.  We live in a an area where high humidity is common during the summer months.  Powdered detergent has the problem of clumping under humid conditions.  The dishwasher tabs have the ecological problem of being the highest in phosphate concentration and while they do an excellent job of cleaning the dishes, they leave a stringy plastic residue in the dishwasher.  The eco-friendly dishwasher tabs did not clean the dishes as well and they still left that residue.  The off brand gel dishwasher detergent was cheaper but ended up leaving some of the dishes dirty on a fairly regular basis.  So I'm back to looking for a dishwasher detergent that works.

I decided to pick up a bottle of Finish® dishwasher detergent when doing our recent grocery shopping.  A 1.6L bottle cost $3.49 so as dishwasher detergent goes the price was quite good.  What I did not notice when I bought this dishwasher detergent is it is phosphate free!  Now this is excellent and how I missed that little detail is beyond me because that is the kind of thing I always look for.  So here is a product that is not only inexpensive but also eco-friendly.  This dishwasher detergent is alco recommended by the leading dishwasher brands including Bosch.  I've used it twice now and so far I really like the performance but I've learned from past experience that a dishwasher detergent can perform nicely for a few washes then for some reason fails to perform properly.  I'm not sure why this happens only that it does happen.  At any rate so far this dishwasher detergent does look promising so I am keeping my fingers crossed.  Once I've gone through the entire bottle I'll report back as to the overall performance.

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