The way these fabric conditioner drawers work is that they are actually a syphon. Inside of the drawer you can see a cylinder that goes almost to the bottom of the drawer. This iss actually a cap that covers a tube that is as high as a max fill level mark inside the compartment. Once the level of the fluid goes above that line the water will overflow into that pipe under the cap and out the bottom of the drawer. It wil continue to flow because of the syphon effect untill all liquid is sucked out. The reason you have clear water in it at the end is, that the syphon is pluged up, so when your washing machine goes into the cycle where it's suposed to ad softener, it starts flowing water into that compartment and because of the blockage, the water together with the conditioner doasnt go out the bottom opening in the drawer instead it overflows the compartment. It still goes down into the washing machine it's just that the drawer never drains the water.
You can usually simply pull off that "cylinder/cap" and clean all the buildup gunk and push it back into position when you're done.
storci, July 2006