Softened Water + HE Washer = NIGHTMARE!

In our previous house we had really hard water. Here, there's an "evil"  water softener and I've been having endless trouble to wash my clothes.

Of course I was dumb and had been adding a bit of softener to the loads -- silly me! But I was putting less than a tablespoon of detergent. We bought the Protection plan a couple of months ago (we were offered it & I got the 3 year one -- we can do it even though our washer is two years old!) so I called the Sears technicians today (it's a Kenmore, blah) and this nice lady complimented on my knowledge of my washer & the water situation (this has literally become a near-scientific experiment for me week in, week out). She said I could be a technician too... She instructed me that the machine is probably not spinning right and stopping in the middle of the rinsing cycle because the softener generates suds that clog the draining hose, etc.

So... yeah, boring stuff and I'm trying just running several cycles only with water to rinse the whole thing. She said it might take washing ALL of our clothes at least once before the softener residue can be eliminated. Oh well!

I'm not ruling out other problems with the washer, but I'll try to deal with the softened water situation a little better now that I've been given clear instructions on how to address the problem (or what we think is the problem). I have this nagging suspicion that we ruined the washer on the move by clamping it ourselves (the manual says technicians have to come to clamp it for us). I hope that if this is the problem they don't tell us that it's a "pre-existing condition" and that the plan doesn't apply. Wish me luck!

This post is brought to you as a courtesy of a "grading jail" break. I HAVE to finish my grading tonight, but obviously grading is so time-consuming and boring. If I'm done I'll blog again tonight as a (lame) reward.