Too much dishwasher salt

July 6, 2017 2:14 PM

I used too much dishwasher salt on my glasses a few times, and now they are always cloudy. How can I get them back to being see through and shiny? I tried a few hot rinses, but it didn't help.
posted by bergnotburg to Home & Garden (17 answers total)

Could the dishwasher salt have etched/scratched the glasses, so they're permanently cloudy now?
posted by heathrowga at 2:16 PM on July 6, 2017 [8 favorites]

Get Jet Dry. If you care about the way your clean dish aesthetics, it's the thing to do. It does actually work. Some people will tell you just to use vinegar and it's not the same thing, not at all. Just drop the 4 bucks for a bottle and put it in the little rinse aid receptacle on your machine.
posted by phunniemee at 2:20 PM on July 6, 2017 [5 favorites]

You might try buffing the lenses with toothpaste. I assume they're made of plastic, and although I've never heard of people using this technique with glasses, it's now a well-known hack for bringing clarity to foggy old headlight covers (just search on "headlights" and "toothpaste" for details).
posted by Rash at 2:39 PM on July 6, 2017

I think they mean drinking glasses not lenses?
posted by The otter lady at 2:52 PM on July 6, 2017 [7 favorites]

If my experience is any guide, dishwashers etch glass. And plastic. Honestly, if you want them to stay transparent and crystalline, hand-wash them.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 4:35 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

What's in your dishwasher salt? When we used to have a crappy dishwasher and hard water, and our glasses were cloudy from mineral deposits, LemiShine worked miracles. It's mostly citric acid.
posted by leahwrenn at 4:37 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Vinegar works for this, too, ime. You need to let it soak for like 20 min, tho.
posted by Bardolph at 4:55 PM on July 6, 2017

Distilled white vinegar. Vinegar is absolutely magical on cloudy water glasses!
posted by belau at 5:20 PM on July 6, 2017

You might also try a citric acid-based product like Lemi-Shine or a powdered lemonade Kool-Aid. I'm not sure if that's the right Lemi-Shine thing—they changed their lineup since I last looked, but I'm thinking a citric acid product might work.
posted by jroybal at 5:37 PM on July 6, 2017

I cleaned up some cloudy, grungy drinking glasses with Barkeeper's Friend. I filled a dish pan with hot water and shook in a few tablespoons of my Friend. Let it dissolve, then soaked the glasses for a few minutes. Worked like a charm.
posted by workerant at 5:59 PM on July 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yep, vinegar. I fill the sink halfway with steaming hot water and then dump in a ton of vinegar, works good!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:31 PM on July 6, 2017

3rding soak them in warm white vinegar. You can buy giant many-litre bottles for very, very little.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:33 AM on July 7, 2017

I would try CLR.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:35 AM on July 7, 2017

Barkeepers Friend. I have rather hard water, and some of my canning jars had gotten so cloudy that I thought they were etched beyond help. Vinegar didn't clear them up, but Barkeepers did.
posted by desuetude at 7:09 AM on July 7, 2017

Get some sodium tripolyphosphate and add it to the compartment where you add your dishwasher detergent, with the detergent.
posted by old_growler at 11:26 PM on July 7, 2017

I just discovered Lemi Shine and it is A REVELATION! Srsly, get some yesterday. I live in San Antonio, on top of limestone with water from an aquifer. Hard water for daaayys. This shit finally got my dishes clean.
posted by wwartorff at 11:34 AM on July 9, 2017

4th-ing white vinegar! We throw about a quarter cup in the bottom of the dishwasher and find it works just as well as the commercial stuff at de-clouding our glasses at a lower cost. We have very hard water which is great for washing my hair, but not so great for shiny dishses.
posted by donut_princess at 12:28 PM on July 9, 2017