Several weeks ago I noticed a "Joe Muggs" mug (BIA Cordon Bleu) - love
them - they don't make them anymore --
http://images.booksamillion.com/joe/images/13.jpg

It came out of the dishwasher with a faint mauve/brown color around the
rim and then looked like watercolor painting drippings down over the
cup. I thought that this cup had been washed too many times and had
just given up and the color was done for. I have used one of these
cups each day of 4 or 5 that I have. I didn't notice until a few weeks
later after washing the rest of them in one washload that ALL of them
had this same rain-dripping lines down the side and around the lip. It
was the same mauve/brown color. I assumed that the cups had reached
their peak in usage and put them in a basket downstairs/storage
thinking I'd ponder it awhile.

Then just this last week, on a porcelain cup (good quality - bought in
Japan and beloved) that is used almost daily for 20 years, I took it
out of the dishwasher and found this same pattern of color-streaking
down the side and arond the rim. Ah Ha! The problem lies not with the
quality of the Joe Muggs cups, but something about the dishwasher.

As any who know my dishwasher problems which I finally decided had been
nothing more than overuse of soap, I couldn't imagine getting into this
again -- particularly when I just saw a posting about how much
dishwashers cost -- I think I will stick to Costco for dishwashers'
pricing.

But looking into the top rack of my dishwasher, I find rusted out areas
alongside the right side of the rack, not on the prongs, but possibly
where the cups have leaned up against. First on agenda, buy a new
rack, which probably will be a good fraction/percentage of the cost of
a new Costco dishwasher -- be that as it may ...


First question.
I want to clean up my cups, non-toxically. And I don't want to ruin
them as I'm quite fond of them all. The porcelain had been pretty and
shiny, up to that point.
Thanks for reading all the above if you did; sorry to be so
long-winded.

Any comments on what to use.

Dee