Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Lemi Shine

A while back, we started having issues with our dishwasher cleaning properly. I tried running it empty with vinegar and all sorts of other techniques I had found on-line. But none seemed to really solve the problem and so, we called the manufacturer and they provided us with a contact for a local repair service. We were more than a little frustrated by the issue because, at the time, the dishwasher was probably only 4 or so years old.

They were a great service company, because we never actually used them. Before they would even set up an appointment, knowing that we lived in an area that had fairly hard city water, they recommended that we try using Lemi Shine and see if that solved our problem. If that didn't work, then we were to call back for an appointment. (We never did have to call in the service group to repair the dishwasher. We did keep the contact information for future reference though. A lesser organization might have come out and charged us for a service call, rather than provide the recommendation to try Lemi Shine upfront.)

It didn't take us long to find the product on the shelves of the local Walmart (the only place I have actually seen it). We started by first running the dishwasher with just Lemi Shine. It seemed to work pretty well. It cleaned up some lingering stains and seemed like the inside was a little shinier. The next thing we did was run a full load of dishes with both detergent and Lemi Shine. The dishes came out much cleaner than they had been. With continued use, it only seemed to improve.

We did this for a while, using a couple of bottles of the product. Then one day, we ran out and we never got around to getting more. Then, recently, I started to notice the return of the hard water stains on our dishes and the feeling that everything was not getting quite as clean as it should. I had my husband go out and buy a bottle that day and started adding it to the wash again. Wallah! It worked. The dishwasher is running better again.

I plan to use it, not in every load, but fairly regularly to keep my dishwasher running well.

For more tips and tricks, check out Works For Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

8 comments:

Stacy said...

I am going to have to try this. We have well water and have just an awful time with our dishwasher even though we have a filter, softener, etc. I've never heard of this product, but I am definitely going to try it.

Buffie said...

I'm going to have to remember this tip. We're moving to a house with a well next month so we may need something like this.

Heather said...

Great info! This comes at the perfect time, as yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon scraping my dishwasher's filter clean of I don't know how many years worth of hard water deposits.

Thanks so much!
Heather

Kate @ The Gaines Gang said...

I have had this same issue with my diswasher. I am grabbing my keys and running to Walmart right now. Thanks for sharing!

Julie said...

Thanks I'll have to remember this. We have hard water too.

Rachel R. said...

Oh, thank you! Water doesn't come much harder than ours. And I'm pretty sure I bought a bottle of that stuff ages ago (while I didn't have a dishwasher - was thinking I might be able to use it for other cleaning problems, if I made it inot a paste) and had forgotten about it.

Stefany said...

Wow! Great tip! Thanks for sharing.

The Activity Mom said...

Great tip! We are having problems too and will give this a try!