Dear Lemi Shiners,

My beautiful, eternal companion and I have always assiduously heeded the warnings about not using citrus products in dishwashers because - they say - it etches cutlery and drinking glasses. Ergo, we avoided anything that even hinted at even knowing what citric acid was as if it were the plague. The problem was that despite our caution, whatever we used in the machine left a mineral deposit on glassware, crockery, and almost everything else. In time, after replacing one set of glass tumblers, we bought new ones, but they went the same way as the old ones, turning from crystal clear into a mucky off white that was distasteful to look at and even worse to drink from! Four and a half years ago we were blessed with a new dishwasher that promised the moon and clean dishes, but always failed to deliver. Initially, we thought that we might be stuffing the monster too densely, so we reduced the size of the wash and tried every dish washing powder, balls, cubes, gels, liquids, including soda crystals, and all possible combinations of these products in our efforts to obtain a decent result. Alas, we were ever disappointed! So, we resorted to the unthinkable! We washed sensitive items by hand in the bowl just as my Granny did in the fading years of the Victorian Era. It's not a lot of fun, and you can't make me like doing it. One week ago, I was rambling, as is my wont, through our local Wal-Mart, eyeing the shelves for a miracle dishwasher product that would come close to doing what it said it would do. I knew that I was clutching at straws. However, unless one descends into intractable pessimism when one's dishwashing experiences are solidly encased in a history of constant disappointment, one tries to entertain a small, feeble, but flickering flame of hope even when experience repeatedly attempts to extinguish it each time the drying cycle ends and the door is opened. Letting my eyes flit languidly along the lines of dishwashing miracle products - not one of them carried a notice with the device, "I AM USELESS - DO NOT BUY ME!" attached to it. Had even one done so, it would, at the very least, have been honest. However, this time in my peregrinations I beheld a stranger sitting modestly on the shelf with the same old tried and failed stuff. I looked at the Lemi Shine and was immediately turned off it because "Lemi" sounded too close to "lemon" of the citrus variety, and the label, as if to mount a direct challenge, was lemon-themed and lemon-coloured. Yet, I decided to read the label and see what these tyros were offering.