Phosphates: Getting my Dishes Clean. Finally

We have a dishwasher that we purchased a couple of years ago.  Not the best, mind you, but somewhere in the middle of the Consumer Reports ranges.  Fact:  dishes were filmy and sometimes outright dirty after running it with the highest quality dish soap (also tried powders, powerballs, etc etc).  We completely pre-washed the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  This sucked.

Turns out that Dishwasher cleanser companies have removed Phosphates from the cleansers, better for the fishes and environment, bad for our plates and glasses and bad because now there is 20 minutes of wasted water in the sink for the pre-wash wash phase.

I heard about re-adding the phosphates back to the dishwasher detergent.  Yeah, I'm an environment abuser, but it works and I save a couple of gallons of water each time.

Put just a bit of this powder http://goo.gl/SqqGL (available at Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes) at the bottom of the detergent holder, fill the rest up with detergent and VOILA, dishes are clean after a wash now!  No measuring needed.  Just dust the bottom of the holder, fill the rest with detergent.

CLEAN DISHES, no residue!