Review and Giveaway: Cascade ActionPacs (CLOSED)

As a busy mom, I am SO thankful to have a dishwasher in our kitchen. And I’m even more thankful when I find a product that really helps give me a few extra minutes here and there when doing my usual household chores. I’ve found that I really don’t mind doing the dishes – but I do get frustrated when I open the dishwasher expecting the dishes inside to be clean and find that I have to run it again instead. Not only is that a waste of water and energy, but of time as well. I not only want my dishes to get clean on the first go-around – I need them to.

Over the years I’ve tried several different kinds of dishwasher detergents, trying to find something that a) works well, b) doesn’t leave residue on our dishes, and c) doesn’t cost us an arm and a leg at the grocery store. We have a fairly new dishwasher in this house – we bought and installed it when we moved in six years ago. It’s always worked really well without requiring a lot of pre-rinsing or soaking, but I’ve found that the detergent you use makes a huge difference in how the dishes come clean (or not). I’ve found a few kind of detergents that I like in general, but always seem to end up coming back to the same brand over and over again – Cascade. It’s the brand that my mom always used, and I find that it seems to work the best for our family’s needs too. Recently I’ve switched from using powdered or liquid detergent to the amazingly convenient option of pre-measured gel packs, and have been using Cascade’s ActionPacs pretty much exclusively.

What they are:

Cascade ActionPacs are a pre-measured pack that you simply place in your dishwasher’s detergent cup and go. There’s no measuring, no spilling – and no overfilling the compartment. The ActionPacs simply dissolve when the dishwasher is run, delivering the exact amount of detergent necessary for your load. ActionPacs come in several varieties – Cascade Complete All-In-1, Cascade with Dawn, and Cascade with Bleach. From the website:

• Cascade Complete All-in-1 ActionPacs™ give you the confidence of a job done right. It breaks down, dissolves, and rinses away tough food particles without the need to pre-wash.
• Cascade ActionPacs with the Grease Fighting Power of Dawn gives you the scrubbing power of Cascade and the grease-fighting power of Dawn. It’s the perfect combination for an amazing clean. Plus, they’re incredibly easy to use. Just place the ActionPac in your dishwasher—no unwrapping and no mess.
• Cascade ActionPacs with Extra Bleach Action have a breakthrough formula that combines the scrubbing power of Cascade, the grease-fighting power of Dawn, and the stain fighting action of bleach to fight tough stains like tea.

ActionPacs come in a variety of scents and package sizes. Courtesy of Cascade and MS&L, we received a package of Cascade ActionPacs with Dawn in a 20-count package to try out and review.

Here’s my take on them:

I had the perfect opportunity to try out the Cascade ActionPacs over Christmas break while my kids were home for two weeks, and with the extra dishes generated by holiday baking and meal preparation as well. Now as I said, we’ve used Cascade for years and I’m already a huge fan of the Cascade Complete detergent. I’ve used the Cascade Complete All-in-1 ActionPacs in the past too, but lately had been using a different brand in an effort to try and save money. I didn’t think that the regular ActionPacs would work well enough in our dishwasher so hadn’t tried those before.

What I’ve found though is that the Cascade ActionPacs do a very good job of cleaning our dishes, even with some of the more difficult ones like the residue left on our cereal bowls by a couple of our favorite breakfast cereals, and greasy pots and pans. Very rarely have I found any dish that needs to be run through again, and just about every single one of those was because the dish wasn’t placed in a good spot in the dishwasher or it wasn’t loaded correctly. And there’s no residue left on any of our dishes at all. Back when I’ve used powdered detergents, I had a hard time getting enough into the detergent cup without overfilling it, making it hard to close the lid – and often the lid would then stick shut and wouldn’t open at all when the dishwasher was run. With the ActionPacs I’ve only had one occasion where the detergent cup lid didn’t open – and that was because I’d carelessly caught the edge of the ActionPac in the lid when shutting it. When I pay attention and make sure that the ActionPac is completely inside the compartment, it’s worked correctly every time. And it’s so much easier than dealing with messy powder or liquid detergents. Plus, I don’t have to worry about getting detergent on my hands or spilling it.

I’ve always used Dawn as our regular dish soap because I love how easily it deals with the grease and oils that cooking and baking can leave on your pans and dishes. Having it combined with the dishwasher cleaning power of Cascade is a huge win-win as far as I’m concerned. 

The bottom line:

Cascade ActionPacs are a quick and easy, convenient way to add a few minutes back into your day without having to worry about the mess of using traditional dishwasher detergent or having to re-run loads of dirty dishes. You can load your dishwasher completely and let Cascade (and Dawn) take care of the rest.

Check out this fun video from Alyson Hannigan of “How I Met Your Mother” on the topic of being a working mom!

Where can you find them?:

You can purchase Cascade ActionPacs wherever other Cascade dishwasher detergent products are sold. Prices vary depending on package size, retailer and location but you can save $1.00 with a coupon available on their website.

Would you like to try them?:

I have the opportunity to help a couple lucky readers with their dirty dishes by giving away two Cascade ActionPacs! If you’d like to give these a try and see for yourself how well they work, here are the rules:

1. 1. Enter by leaving a comment here to let me know which variety or scent of Cascade ActionPacs would be your first choice (please understand there’s no guarantee that’s what you’ll receive). Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
   2. The contest will run until Friday, January 15th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing, contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY. US entries only, please.
   3. Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
   4. If you’d like extra entries, you can:
   • Subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar) or subscribe via e-mail – leave me a separate comment to let me know.
   • Mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post, and leave a separate comment with the link to your post so I can find it.
   • Either Twitter about, ‘Digg’ or ‘Kirtsy’ this post – leave me a separate comment with your username at whichever site(s) you chose (one extra entry per method).
   • Become a ‘fan’ of this site on Facebook – there’s a link in the sidebar or you can click here.

So that’s a total of 7 comments/entries if you do all of the extra entry options.

Good luck! 

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – the random number generator has chosen comments #136 and #2 as the winners:

Congratulations to:

• Tatum V (no blog) who said, “I would choose the Fresh Scent thanks..“
• Stephanie (no blog) who said, “I’d go for the Fresh scent. I love Cascade but have not tried the ActionPacs yet. Thanks for the giveaway!“

I will be e-mailing you both shortly to work out the details!

This post courtesy of: Cascade and MS&L. No payment or compensation, other than product samples as described above, was received for this post