The Bargain Dish Detergent Edition
This is just one simple remedy for life’s quandaries… for more, click here.
The other night I attempted to attack a sink full of dirty dishes collected over the week. Dish detergent in hand, I aimed and squirted a good amount of this slippery soap and hosed down my dishes with hot water to get the cleansing started.
After leaving my dishes to face an attack of soapy, antibacterial goodness, I suited in gloves. I was astonished to find my dishes had not responded to my pre-soak offense.
“Maybe no visual affects have taken place,” I thought, “surely a soak in hot water and dish soap has got to have made some substantial difference.”
I dived in scrubbing at left-over calzone particles but surprisingly I struggled. I added more soap to my assault but the food residue remained. I guess that’s what I get for purchasing the value-buy detergent from the $1 store.
Now the fact cleaning my dishes took extra effort did not bother me as much as the fact I wasted a hard earned dollar on faulty soap. Obviously this $1 buy will not satisfy my clean dish criteria; new, powerful dish soap is warranted. But what am I to do with all this detergent?
In collaboration with colleague, Mark, I decided to create:
To extend upon Mark’s research and to build upon his experience, I would like to note that dishwashing soap lacks the moisturizing properties of hand soap. So why not add the super cleaning powers of dishwashing detergent with hand moisturizer? I don’t know.
The Super Soap:
2/3 part $1 store dishwashing detergent
1/3 part moisturizer that you don’t quite like, but don’t want to waste because of sentimental/familial/economic reasons.
Gently stir and voila! Super Soap!
I have found that after sitting overnight, Super Soap gets to be super watery making it a great candidate for use in a foaming soap dispenser (no need to add water). Just pump and enjoy the amazing cleansing powers of dish detergent, but the moisturizing properties of hand soap.
*Side note: Super Soap may lose it’s super properties as the dish detergent is working to dissolve the oily compounds in the moisturizer… this is a hypothesis, but a reasonable a priori assumption nonetheless. I recommend making small batches at a time.