Which is which? The tale of a dishwashing saga.

The Teenager actually has very few chores in our home.  Basically, they boil down to keeping her room clean, keeping her bathroom clean, and cleaning the kitchen after the meals (minus unloading the dishwasher which is the boys’ job).

Last week, we ran out of Cascade Actionpacs with Gain, which we love.  After being married for just about 13 years, we’ve finally found the dishwasher pod things we like. We really can’t find anything natural that doesn’t leave a hazy film on our dishes combined with our water. These work well, and because you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, we’ve decided to stick to this brand because we can get them fairly reasonably from the Dollar Gentral.  Whatever works.

Kind of.

I sent The Hubs to grab some more on his way home from work.  I noticed right off that the tub that they came in was different, and I didn’t really think much about it until The Teen was out of town and I had to load the dishwasher.  I knew they were the same brand, because it said “Gain” on the front, but something was different.  When I put the little pack in the detergent trap thingy, I noticed that it felt a little bigger than the other ones, and it was a little hard to close the trap door.   It wasn’t that big of a deal, and I went on about my business.

Later that day, I opened the dishwasher, and it smelled great.  I really didn’t give that a second thought, though… until….

The Hubs came home and opened the dishwasher to grab a glass out of it.  He said, “these smell like laundry detergent.”  Of course, I knew they had Gain in them, right?  I mean the only real significance between the two of the packages are one is round and the other actually says Cascade on it.

Then it hit him.

Laundry detergent.  For about four days now, we’ve been cleaning our dishes with LAUNDRY DETERGENT!  I asked him where he found them, and he said “back there with the rest of the dishwasher soaps”.  Apparently, there are several of these types of  laundry pods as well as dishwasher pods!  The laundry products are on the back wall, and the dish products are on an aisle.  Of course, I’m usually the one who buys this stuff, so I know where to know.  He didn’t, and I trusted him! HA!

If you weren’t paying attention… well, even if you were… would you be able to tell them apart?  Which is which?

I mean, honestly Gain, if you’re going to start crossing over from the laundry room to the kitchen, at least make it a little more obvious on your packaging that which product is for which room!!  The only place on the front of this Gain flings! tub that give any indication of this being laundry detergent is this little icon – it’s less than the size of a quarter!!  At lease the Cascade tub says “Dishwasher Detergent”.

If it’s going to happen wrong, it’s going to happen to us!