And I would have gotten away with it

... if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their dog too!

Yes, another mystery was solved á la "Mystery, Inc.", but this time there were no men dressed up as ghosts and definitely no one yelling "Yikes","Zoiks" or "RELP!". But what were these mysterious mysteries I hear you ask.

Well there were actually two:

• Why were my clothes not getting clean after being through the wash, and
• Why were the cups still dirty after being in the dishwasher

We covered the basic checks of "Did I turn it on" and "Is it actually washing them" and they both passed. Clothes were wet and steam billowed out of the dishwasher after it had finished. My clothes problem I figured out a couple of days ago, or at least I think I have figured it out. My last two washes were actually done in stone cold water, I had left the temperature dial on 0°C so I don't think the washing liquid was dissolving or cleaning properly.

As for the other problem, it dawned on me this morning that a packet of tablets for the dishwasher probably shouldn't be referring to laundry in any way. So when I was thoroughly reading the packet to see if it contained salt (to prevent lime scale build-up, which seems to be a problem around here) I started to get suspicious when it said by not using this product you risk, amongst other things, having rough feeling laundry. So it seems that for the past couple of weeks we've been using laundry tablets to wash our dishes. At least it was using hot water unlike the washing machine ... maybe I should have put my clothes in the dish washer.

Mental note: Get proper dish washing tablets tonight