Cascade 2-in-1 Action Pacs with Bleach Hydroclean and Dawn Review

Tired of crusty sticky food sticking to my dishes after a cycle in the dishwasher I decided to try Cascade 2-in-1 Action Pacs with Bleach Hydroclean and Dawn.

Cascade 2 in 1 Action Pacs are kind of remind me of bath beads. They are actually a bit bigger than bath beads though. They come in a little plastic baggy type thing, the baggy thing is sealed all the way around though. Inside this little baggy is some tightly wrapped powdered dish washing detergent, on top of that is some liquid shine shield. So the top of the little baggy thing is liquid and pliable. The dishwashing detergent is Dawn, which is a pretty reliable brand.

The liquid shine is there to help prevent foods from sticking to your dishes and to keep your dishes shiny. It serves to keep glasses from getting something called etching which is a permanent cloudiness of glass. The bleach in this particular kind of 2 in 1 action pacs helps to remove set in stain and to deoderize and kill germs.

The Cascade 2 in 1 Action Pacs come in a re-sealable plastic bag. You get 20 action packs per bag. The bag has an over all weight of 13.4 oz. You can also buy it in a larger sized bucket.  Since I have found these pacs to be pretty reliable I decided to buy the bucket. The bucket comes with 90 pacs.  So it will last you for about 3 months.  It is also a nice sturdy plastic it is tall and thin so it sits on the base of the kitchen sink just fine with out taking up much room, and it helps to keep the pacs safe from getting wet.  Which by the way you should make sure not to do.  The manuafacturer strongly warns against this as well as puncturing the pacs. The pac contains sodium carbonate, sodium silicate and enzymes. They also warn you to not get it on your skin or in your eyes, if someone were to ingest one of these such as a child they should be given a full glass of water or milk, and the doctor or poison control center should be called immediately.

I would say that when I use these pacs my dishes end up about 90% clean.  Not completely perfect but I would say that the powders I have used only cleaned about 70% and the gel that I tried only cleaned about 50% of my dishes, and left lots of food sticking to them.  So 90% clean is pretty good.  Not to mention with the gel and powder, the powder particularly my dishwasher did not always smell clean inside which was quite gross, considering it is there to wash dishes.  When I use the Cascade 2-in-1 Action Pacs with Bleach Hydroclean and Dawn my dishwasher also smells clean and fresh.  I know because there is bleach it is actually killing germs and bacteria in my dishwasher.  However I have noticed that the bleach is having a bit of an affect on some of my colored dishes, and seems to be fading my McDonalds plates.  With 3 kids I like to use McDonalds plates, but I have to either wash them by hand or accept a little fading.

So while these pacs are not perfect they are much better than pretty much every other kind of dishwasing detergent and gel I have used before.