Water Softener Recommendations

Are you on a well or just have hard water from the city?

I've not seen where you simply isolate certain outlets and omit others. You generally hijack where the water feeds to the house, and run the water through the softener and all of your water is de-calcified.

I had a Home Depot model water softener at my previous house and I upgraded it to a better softener and it worked a lot better. The brine tank held a lot more salt so you go further between filling it up and there is a proper brine tank, and a proper softening tank. Big box softeners, if something goes wrong, you discard the whole unit and get a new one, whereas the upgraded units you can find replacement parts.

For the shower, spray the inside with Rain-X, and use a squeegee after each shower. <-Duct tape solution

I assume you have rinse aid in the dishwasher, right?

If you have an "Obama" dishwasher, it's not drying your dishes fast enough to prevent the spots. Glasses you're going to have to pull out and wipe down with a microfiber (plates and plastic don't matter really.) Another duct tape solution, but my 2 year old washer spends two hours on a "dry" cycle, and yet I still have to stack everything on a series of microfibers to finish drying.

Oh, I had a really bad experience with the Rain-X that comes in the bronze bottle (new-ish ceramic coating something or other). Bad enough that I left the brand new bottle at a gas station and had to scrub the shite off before I kept driving. Stick to the original yellow version.