
Dishwashing detergent hack: Two ingredients (2015) - superasn
https://www.whatlisacooks.com/blog/2015/5/8/dishwashing-detergent-hack-two-ingredients
======
crazygringo
Everything I know about dishwasher detergent is that it is formulated to clean
_chemically_ , i.e. with enzymes etc. that actually _break food down_ over the
course of tens of minutes or hours.

Dish soap does NOT do that. (It's also why you shouldn't wash dishes by hand
with dishwasher detergent, because the chemicals are too harsh.)

I don't doubt that this "hack" does _some_ cleaning, but for things like
crusted-on tomato sauce, hardened cheese, dried egg yolks, etc. -- it's just
not going to work as well. Dish soap simply doesn't break these things down.
It's not meant to.

(Washing by hand with dish soap works because you're applying intense pressure
and abrasion, neither of which a dishwasher can do -- which is why it does it
chemically instead.)

I just don't find it credible that "the results are identical". Either the
author isn't paying enough attention, or else they're doing extensive "pre-
washing" of their dishes before loading them, or they're washing so incredibly
quickly after eating that food never has the time to dry/harden in the first
place.

~~~
twic
I once met a chap who told me he used his dishwasher without any powder or
soap at all, and it still worked.

Now, maybe he was making it up. But i suspect that there is a common class of
dish dirt where prolonged steaming and jetting with hot water is adequate in
practice - i'd expect anything water-soluble to dissolve in hot water! So,
residues from tea or coffee, water-based pasta sauce, fruit juice, jam, etc.
It won't work for everything, of course, but it might work for a surprising
range of things.

~~~
wu_tang_chris
I lived in a co-op in PA during college, we had a "dish sanitizer" instead of
a dish washer. It was basically just blasting the shit out of the dishes with
crazy hot water. We were supposed to wash them before we put them in there but
nobody ever did.

~~~
TwoBit
The cafeteria at my dorm had this. High pressure very hot water spray. Took
about a minute. All the dishes were ceramic and there was glass and flatware.
I don't know if anything plastic or other material could be subjected.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
The school cafeteria I worked in had this (was a middle school that also
prepared food for some smaller elementaries). We put plastic foodservice
containers in there all the time. As long as the plastic is made to stand the
heat of the water, you are usually OK. Home dishwashers have similar
restraints.

------
meatmanek
A fun trick is to google for the safety data sheet (SDS) of household chemical
products. They'll tell you rough proportions of some of the ingredients. (Not
all, just the ones they're required to -- the more dangerous ones.)

For example, the SDS for Cascade Pacs[1] tells us that there's ~40% sodium
carbonate (washing soda, a fairly strong base), a few percent of sodium
percarbonate (washing soda + hydrogen peroxide), and a few percent of an
ethoxylated alcohol, a surfactant.

There are also some notes further down about Subtilisin, which apparently is a
protease, an enzyme that breaks down protein.

(I'm not a chemist, so my interpretations of what these chemicals are/do is
based on search results for the chemical names / CAS numbers.)

I bet if you looked up the SDS for Dawn dish soap, it'd be mostly surfactants,
so sodium bicarbonate + Dawn dish soap is a reasonable approximation of sodium
carbonate + surfactants.

OxyClean is also sodium carbonate, sodium percarbonate, and ethoxylated
alcohols, so it'd also probably do just fine -- whether it's safe to use in a
dishwasher depends mostly on the toxicity of those ethoxylated alcohols.

1\.
[https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/C...](https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/Cascade_Complete_Action_Pacs_Dishwasher_Detergent_-
_Fresh.pdf) 2\.
[https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean...](https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean%20Versatile%20Stain%20Remover.pdf)

~~~
a_imho
I always wondered, how safe are dish soaps? Can they replaced with something
more natural, like vinegar or lemon juice? We have those around for simple
household cleaning, only bringing out sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide
for heavy duty cleaning.

~~~
kortex
Depends on the "dish soap". I've seen everything from sodium fatty acetates
(old fashioned lye-and-grease soap, Castille soap) to PEGylated alkanes and
sodium lauryl sulfate.

Vinegar and lemon juice work well on Lewis bases (amines, some proteins) and
some inorganic salts, but they aren't detergents.

NaOCl and NaOH are right proper cleaning agents and will saponify fats.

------
jeffrallen
Here's another solution. Next time you run out, buy two bags of dishwasher
soap. Then when one bag is done.... wait for it... USE THE SECOND BAG!

All that's left is to put one bag of soap on your shopping list and you have 5
to 20 days to manage to buy it before you're back in fish soap and baking
powder hell.

~~~
cryptoz
That trick only works if you have lots of money. And lots of space.

Do you apply it to other things too, like garbage bags? Or olive oil? What
about hand soap?

All of a sudden you're spending 2x normal for a while. Not a lot of people can
do that.

~~~
colonwqbang
Ah, the garbage bag. This elusive luxury item which throughout history has
been reserved only for people who have lots of money.

~~~
cryptoz
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But yes, waste disposal has
been done much better for the rich historically than the poor.

I listed garbage bags specifically because I've noticed recently that the
"good" ones (like, large, or strong) are actually quite pricey and often only
are available in large quantities (40 count or something). So the price to buy
trash bags might be like $20 or something. Buy 2 at once? $40 on garbage bags
while grocery shopping? I mean that's a lot, no? To get the good version of
something, twice? Not exactly an item for the poor to double-up on.

And suggest the poor buy the less good trash bags that are cheaper? Well then
we have shown that garbage bags can indeed be a luxury item even today.

~~~
colonwqbang
You do realise that your consumption of garbage bags does not double because
you buy two rolls at a time. If you are wealthy enough to save up for a one-
time investment of 1 roll of garbage bags, you are able to implement the
scheme suggested by the original poster.

~~~
cryptoz
Yes I realize that consumption does not double simply because you buy double.
I am not commenting on garbage bags (the topic is detergent); I am commenting
on the strategy being used for more than 1 thing. If you use this strategy for
1 item, okay, I get it, the expense is fine. But if the trick is used for
other things (as seems logical) then the initial expense of starting to do
this could be large.

~~~
felbane
You're not making any sense here.

Nothing is forcing you to go buy double everything each time you shop.

If cash is tight but you want to implement this scheme, buy an extra unit of
one household item (e.g. laundry detergent) your first trip. Hext time, choose
another item (e.g. trash bags).

Eventually you've got a backup unit of every item, and you're now just buying
your one item on the same consumption schedule, except now instead of
replacing the item you're replacing the backup.

------
oh_sigh
On the topic of dishwashers, can anyone tell me why no dishwasher let's me
fill it with, say, 20 loads worth of detergent and then it just dispenses it
as needed? My dishwasher can do that with "rinse aid"(which I don't use), but
I've never seen one that can do it with regular detergent.

Another "hack" is that the tray you're supposed to fill with detergent is
almost always way too big. People think "more soap -> more clean", but that is
only true to an extent. You will be just fine filling it only halfway up, even
if you have a full load in there. The same goes with laundry detergent.

~~~
amluto
GE makes dishwashers that do exactly this. You look up your water hardness in
a table, push some magic buttons as described in the manual to tell the
dishwasher how hard your water is, and you pour detergent into the reservoir.
Interestingly, you are strongly advised not to mix chlorine-based detergent
with enzyme-based detergent at risk of turning the mixture into hard-to-remove
goo.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Seems like determining water hardness would be something the dishwasher could
do.

~~~
citiguy
Have you ever taken a dishwasher apart? I have and it's an unbelievably simple
machine that they charge you big bucks for. There's a lot it could do but
manufacturers are in the business of making money, not selling complex, hard
to maintain machines.

~~~
Loughla
They are very simply constructed - and I think that's for two reasons: 1, it's
cheaper, and 2 - My experience with dishwashers is that they are sort of
intended to be disposable. They're relatively cheap, and replacement parts for
the things that can fail regularly are very nearly as expensive as the actual
machine.

The control board is the thing most likely to go (electronics and water);
everything else is floats and switches. It's also 7/8ths the price of an
entirely new machine.

This is one conspiracy theory I whole-heartedly subscribe to.

~~~
ydant
My experience (and this may be brand or price-point dependent) is the
opposite. My Bosch had a couple of failures (that ideally would never happen,
of course), but because the parts are fairly standardized and the design is
very elegant, I feel like it's one of the last few "owner-repairable" items in
the house.

The replacement parts were very reasonable (a fraction of the original cost of
the dishwasher), easy and quick to obtain (from a particular retailer which
also does very informative non-pushy YouTube videos for reparing/diagnosing
problems), the diagnosing was straightforward (like debugging code), and the
replacement was manageable (if a little cramped).

There may be a price cut-off where this starts being true, and where it stops
being true. My particular dishwasher was ~$1k 10 years ago, has had ~$120 of
parts replaced over that period, one of which was cosmetic, and has otherwise
worked flawlessly. All in all, I'm very happy with that trade-off.

I just checked, and there are two control boards that could be replaced - each
$150.

I'm pretty enamored with the engineering elegance of the dishwasher. Until I
opened one up and had to fix something I always thought it would be a lot more
complicated than it really is.

~~~
quercusa
I've had the same experience with our Bosch dishwasher.

------
superasn
Came across this hack for using ordinary liquid soap in dishwasher. Posting it
here since a hack is a hack :)

tldr: use a few tablespoons of baking soda with the regular dishwash soap. The
reason for not being able to use regular dishwash soap is because it makes
lots of suds which floods your dishwasher. But baking soda prevents that from
happening.

Would love to know the pros and cons from an expert here.

~~~
refurb
I was a chemist in my past life, but not a soap chemist, so no doubt someone
will be along to correct me.

At a high level, soap is soap. They are basically molecules with a greasy end
(long carbon chain) and a polar end (ionic group). The molecules form stable
micelles that looks like little cell membranes almost, with the greasy ends
pointing inward and the polar ends pointing outward (in contact with water,
which is polar).

That allows the soap to combine with greasy molecules you are trying to clean
away. You're basically suspending the grease in water using the soap
molecules.

Now, there are a ton of different soap though. The polar functional groups can
be carboxylic acids (typical homemade soap, hydrolyze fats with lye), or
phosphate groups (now banned as the phosphates end up in waterways and cause
algae blooms) or sulfates (the most typical last time I looked). There are no
doubt others I'm not as familiar with.

Now soaps all do the same thing, but there are important differences. So this
"hack" works in terms of providing a soap and killing the foaming with baking
soda (we used this trick in the lab all the time to break up foams and
emulsions). The baking soda can also act as a water softening agent.

That said, dishwashers are usually made for specific detergents because you
don't want build up from leftover soaps and you also don't want to corrode any
metal parts.

So this works, but probably not as good as actual dish detergent (but it might
not matter if your dishes aren't that dirty), but you are taking a risk that
continued use might gunk up your machine. Or maybe it won't.

~~~
pedantsamaritan
I think most dishwasher detergents switched to enzymes to replace phosphates:
[https://www.cnet.com/news/appliance-science-how-
dishwasher-d...](https://www.cnet.com/news/appliance-science-how-dishwasher-
detergents-digest-food-stains/)

That article implies the enzymes do some work, so that surfactants/soap can
carry away the tougher components (protein and starch)

~~~
Scoundreller
I could believe the enzyme bit. Soaps require 3 things to work well: sheer
force, concentration and temperature. The higher the better for all 3.

Dishwashers can’t do consistent sheer force unless the sprayer hits your dish
just right.

So makes sense that their cleaning agent will use some other mechanism just
requiring application/soaking and not sheer force.

~~~
twic
Dishwasher powder is also extremely alkaline, i believe. I (cosmetically)
ruined an aluminium Moka coffee pot by putting it through a dishwasher.

~~~
refurb
Nothing cleans quite as good as strong alkaline. In the lab, we'd use a 50%
lye bath and it strips off _everything_.

If you want to add a bit of punch, you can add some 30% hydrogen peroxide as
an oxidizer. Caution is needed as mixing a strong oxidizer and organic
material is a recipe for fire or an explosion.

~~~
rstuart4133
> Nothing cleans quite as good as strong alkaline.

Depends on what you are cleaning. Most oven cleaners are strong alkalines,
often sodium hydroxide. They work well enough on grease, but neglect it a bit
and the heat turns the grease into a char that nothing short of a steel
scraper and lot of elbow grease will remove. (On reflection, that char may be
a combination of what was grease and protein.) In any case, alkaline cleaners
and soaps won't touch it.

But allow to ammonia at it for 12 or so hours (it doesn't have to be wet -
just exposed), and it just wipes away. The usual technique is to put the
stainless steel fittings in a garbage bag, pour in a cup of cloudy ammonia,
and tie off overnight. (If you want to have working nostrils afterwards, open
bag outside.)

It even works on the glass door. Open so it's flat, cover with paper towels,
soak paper towels in cloudy ammonia, hide outside for an hour so the smell
doesn't take you out and burnt on crap wipes off.

I don't the chemistry is, but it's magic. It would be interesting to find out
what the chemistry is, actually.

------
noxToken
I ran out of dish soap a few weeks ago, and I came across this same recipe. I
found that my dishes were clean, but glassware and ceramic had a film on it.
It wiped off easily with a towel.

Note that I tried this exactly 1 time.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Adding a teaspoon of Lemi-shine (which is just citric acid, which you can buy
in bulk online) to the late rinse cup will solve that problem.

(The late rinse cup is the one with the door that seals; the early soap cup is
the one the door doesn't seal; it is labeled "pre-wash" in the article photo.
The pre-wash cup is where you should put the baking soda/Dawn mixture.)

~~~
wrycoder
Adding some TSP should help.

~~~
core-questions
TSP is magic. I put it in the laundry from time to time. Used to be built into
laundry detergent back in the day, right? Banned now. Well, I only use it for
nasty stains and really dirty stuff.

~~~
Tagbert
TSP - Tri Sodium Phosphate

It was an effective cleaner and an even more effective fertilizer that fed
toxic algae blooms in aquatic environments. Not the best choice unless you
don’t have anything else.

~~~
core-questions
Oxi-Clean is what I use 99.99% of the time. TSP is a rarity, and since the
vast, vast majority of people here are never putting it in the drains, I don't
think it's going to be the end of the world.

------
exabrial
I would probably _not_ do this long term without expertise from someone that
understands the 'why' on the ingredient list on commercial detergents... but
my limited intuition says it's probably ok in the short term. The hotter the
water the better, and always dry as hot as possible. Dishwashers save a ton of
water, definitely use them when available

~~~
phalangion
Why dry as hot as possible? I was always told that the dry cycle was a waste
of energy unless you need the dishes dry faster.

~~~
exabrial
Sanitization. Your dishwasher spreads dirt and bacteria around and tries to
remove as much as possible with a clean water rinse. Bacteria get into every
micro-pore and nano-sized crack, where detergent is unlikely to penetrate
effectively. Heat doesn't discriminate (unless we're talking prions, but I
digress) and will kill everything that remains.

~~~
joosters
I can't see how that's true. A quick search tells me that dishwashers can get
up to a max of around 60c, that's nowhere enough to kill most bacteria,
especially ones hiding deep inside cavities. Maybe you could pasteurize milk
in an extra-long run of your hot cycle, but it won't come close to sterilizing
stuff.

~~~
ajsnigrutin
60°C is enough. I've made chicken at 60°C in a sous vide without any issues

Here's the pasteurization table:

[https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-
gu...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-
sous-vide-chicken-breast.html)

~~~
rsynnott
So you need to hold at 60 degrees for an hour. Even assuming the dishwasher
isn’t lying about it’s temperature, it’s unlikely to do that.

Edit: looks like some dishwashers have modes that do this, though they take a
very long time.

------
acd
Another environmentally friendly hack you can do is to use pine oil soap for
machine washing clothes. Naturally you may not want to run this on your finest
shirts and pants. But for other old clothes that you do not care that much
about it is just fine. If you do this try it with very little soap first so it
does not cause to much bubbling in the machine. Also check if your water is
hard or soft, if its soft its more likely to work well. Hard water can cause
too much bubbles with pine based soap.

You can use pine oil soap for lots of other cleaning tasks, cleaning the oven
put a drop out on stuck dirt, heat oven up to 80-100C, wipe off. You can also
use green soap for washing the toilet and sink.

For washing the coffee maker use vinegar mixed with water, run it a short wile
so waster circlulates through the pump, stop. Wait for 30 minutes.

For dirt stuck on stove, use vinegar let it stay for a while wipe off.

Good natural cleaning items: Baking soda, Vinegar and Pine oil Soap.

~~~
bredren
White Vinegar / Water also replaces Windex! I didn't want to believe it
because I thought we needed the blue stuff in the spray bottle. The product.
But we were out and push came to shove we tried it. I was wrong. It works.

~~~
toomuchtodo
50/50 white vinegar and dawn detergent will keep your shower and toilets
looking new.

------
pixxel
Could someone please confirm what “dish soap” is please for those of us that
aren’t American. It’s soap for cleaning dishes in the sink, right? (as opposed
to soap for washing hands). In the UK we refer to dish soap as washing-up
liquid. Don’t want to use the wrong stuff!

Thanks in advance.

~~~
amagumori
Yeah, dish soap is soap for washing dishes. Us Americans can get pretty
craaazy with our naming conventions!

~~~
vinay427
> Us Americans can get pretty craaazy with our naming conventions!

This really goes both ways. :) Wait until you find out about "public schools"
in the UK, or at least England.

(They're independent private schools which are not government-funded, and are
in fact far less public than government-funded state schools. As I understand
it, they came to be known as "public" because they were successors to
traditional homeschooling in a private environment.)

------
oliwarner
A little meta, but can anybody explain _why_ recipe articles like this (but
usually food) spend so long waffling on about tangential "oh we can't afford
to bit run the dishwasher 24/7" nonsense, and not just get stuck in?

Is there some technical advantage to padding it out, or do they just like to
see their own words?

~~~
nemo1618
The explanation I've heard it's that it's an SEO thing -- if your page isn't
"unique" it gets nuked in the rankings, so recipe sites need to add a long
preamble to distinguish their otherwise-identical recipe.

Another explanation is that longer articles mean more time spent on the site,
i.e. it pumps up those "user engagement" metrics. Plus more space for ads.

The saving grace is that most recipe sites have a "Jump to recipe" button.
They _know_ people don't want to read their life story, but they can't
jeopardize their SEO.

EDIT: more well-informed speculation here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/3gkzog/comment/ctz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/3gkzog/comment/ctz5d9r)

~~~
jdmichal
I think for recipes specifically it started with the fact that a recipe cannot
be copyrighted, but that flavor text around a recipe can. This is why recipe
books do the same thing.

------
bob1029
My dishwashing hack is to simply clean them in the sink by hand and to never
use the dishwasher.

I find this encourages efficient reuse of dishes wherever feasible, and
ensures that things are always cleaned to my expectations.

You might think this takes some extra time, but there are major advantages to
having a sink full of hot soapy water available to you each morning. Wiping
down arbitrary surfaces, mopping floors, etc, is a trivial next step after you
finish with the dishes.

~~~
tropdrop
In my experience, dishwashers use more water, not less. Growing up, we used a
dishwasher regularly, and the process looked like this:

a) remove all bits of food with regular washing, stack next to sink

b) transfer from next to sink to dishwasher

c) (after running dishwasher) wipe off hard water residue from all glass
dishes

d) put away dishes

When I moved out on my own, I discovered the joy of a simple wooden dish rack
next to your sink:

a) remove all bits of food (and oil) with regular washing, stack next to sink

And the above is _all_ one has to do! The dishes dry naturally, and putting
them back into the cabinet is optional. Notice almost identical step a). How
am I supposed to believe dishwashers save water? We used twice the water
simply to get rid of oil! After my partner got tired of wiping hard-water
residue, we abandoned our dishwasher and never looked back.

~~~
fendrak
I used to have this problem, and found it to be caused by a combination of two
factors:

1) Growing up in a house with low water pressure. If the machine doesn't have
much pressure to work with, it seems to do a bad job more or less regardless
of what you try to do

2) Given you have sufficient water pressure, using cheap detergent. After
switching to a "top of the line" dishwasher detergent packet, a dishwasher
went from "borderline useless" to "more clean than I can get them by hand".

Number 2 was by _far_ the most impactful thing I've done; I can essentially
now scrape dishes of large food chunks then put them straight in the
dishwasher, and have a >= 98% confidence they'll come out completely clean.

~~~
tropdrop
Very interesting. Can you tell me what specific brand this is?

~~~
adrr
I’ll second the cascade platinum recommendation. I though my dishwasher was
broken when we used another detergent brand. I took it apart to see if the
filter was plugged and even put a GoPro camera and led light in it to make
sure the washing arms were spinning. Turns out it was because we used a cheap
detergent.

------
every
You can also use straight baking soda as an emergency laundry detergent.
Depending on the machine and size of the load, 0.5 cup/125 ml to 1.0 cup/250
ml. Just put it in directly with the clothes. No dispenser. Also, definitely
__NO __dishwashing soap should be added...

------
tomohawk
Other hacks.

Instead of fabric softener like downy, use same amount of white vinegar. It is
cheaper, your clothes smell fresher, and anyone with allergies will thank you.

For cleaning a tub or shower, make a mixture of 50% white vinegar and 50% dish
detergent (like dawn). Spray the mixture on tile/tub/curtain/doors. Let sit
for 15 - 30 minutes. Spray down with water. Done. This is way cheaper than the
industrial cleaners, much less smelly, and usually works better.

------
andrewla
Do dishwasher manufacturers publish any sort of guidance for detergent
companies for what kinds of detergent are acceptable or problematic for the
dishwashers? Or has this become a chicken and egg problem, where the
manufacturers design for the currently available detergents and the detergent
manufacturers design against current machines?

~~~
throwaway889900
The dishwasher itself is pretty much all plastic for plumbing and doesn't have
any problems with any detergent; it's the dishes that might not react well to
specific detergents/temperatures/etc.

The two don't really design for/against each other outside of small stuff like
the detergent holder being able to take a detergent pod instead of loose
powder. Dishwasher manufacturers are more concerned about form factor and
efficient power use while detergent companies are focused on cleaning
efficiency.

~~~
moistly
In my experience, plastics are not immune to damage from “detergent.” Parts of
my dishwasher became quite brittle and ultimately failed—and the zip ties used
to cobble it back together also become brittle over time.

------
fyfy18
I tried a few of these DIY dishwasher detergent recipes a few months ago
(random things I did during lockdown) and the results were ok. I usually use
all-in-one tablets, which in my country all come individually wrapped in a
plastic wrapper which I was looking to avoid. The main thing I found my DIY
detergent didn't clean was tea stains in cups, everything else came out pretty
good, although sometimes they were a few limescale stains on glasses.

Recently my supermarket had a promotion on dishwasher powder, so I decided to
try that. If anything it's worse than my DIY detergent. The all-in-one tablets
clean perfectly every time, so I'm wondering what else they have which gives
superior results. I regularly fill up the salt and rinse aid (even though this
probably isn't needed with the tablets).

------
greggman3
I find it interesting, at a glance, most of the comments here seem to take for
granted that everyone uses a dishwasher.

I haven't used a dishwasher in about 20 yrs (not bragging, just stating a
fact). In those 20 years 13 of them were in Japan, and 7 in SF. In Japan
dishwashers are not common AFAIK and when I was in SF partly I was just used
to not using one and partly it would have really annoyed my neighbors to run
it when I wanted to and scheduling around that made me just mostly forget it
was there.

I'm curious what other countries they are common/not common.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I actually think the dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer has done more
increase quality of life (especially women's) in the past 100 years than any
other invention. IMO they are the ultimate in time-saving inventions, taking a
task of pure drudgery and cutting down on the time. Only missing piece IMO is
a decent clothes folding machine.

~~~
greggman3
I've seen the hans rosling talk on washing machines and that made sense but I
don't think the same holds true for diswhwashers. Even at an 8-10 person party
it never takes us more than 10 minutes to do all the dishes including pots
etc. On a typical night, family of 4 it takes less.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> Even at an 8-10 person party it never takes us more than 10 minutes to do
> all the dishes including pots etc.

Wow, you're much faster than I. It takes me probably 10 minutes just to load
the dishwasher for a party that big.

------
nemo44x
Just get Barkeepers Friend. It’s magic and made from natural ingredients.
Seriously, if I have kids this will probably be the most important life lesson
I teach them. I don’t even know how soap competes.

~~~
function_seven
Wait, you can use Barkeepers Friend in the dishwasher?

I also love that stuff, but didn't know it could be used that way.

~~~
quercusa
I'm not sure it would be cost-effective.

On the other hand it is the greatest for cleaning pans with burned-on food.

------
ryanmarsh
_stuff that I just don 't normally keep around my house, or stuff that I'm not
sure I'm comfortable putting on my dishes (Borax..._

Borax, a naturally occurring mineral, is worth considering as a home staple.
It has many good uses. The best laundry detergent I’ve ever used was something
my wife made with Borax. I’ve used it for pest control and it worked better
than sprays and other products.

Since this is HN I’m sure others will fall down the rabbit hole of why it’s
not as popular as it used to be.

------
s_gourichon
Surprised no one mentioned that "this one weird hack saved a cook-mom"
clickbait-style of writing. SEO-optimizing writing style was mentioned in
comments, still.

~~~
account42
And of course it mentions a specific brand of dish soap to use and has an ad
for a bottle to hold it. Makes me question if the whole thing isn't made up
just to sell those things.

------
dghughes
Watching the history of soap I learned that soap was scarce in Germany during
WWII. The vegetable oils used to as part of the soap making process were hard
to get. Detergent was invented in WWII by German scientists when they tried to
create artificial soap. Soap leaves a scum on things detergent doesn't.

Somewhat related to the article is suds and salt. Public fountains that are
vandalized with detergent can prevent it by adding salt to prevent suds from
forming.

------
Jaruzel
TOP TIP: Do _not_ put Fairy Liquid in the little tablet tray in your
dishwasher when you run out of tablets. It _does not_ end well. :(

~~~
mszcz
Oh, come on... Tell us how it ends ;)

------
ros86
This isn't a scientific study of course, but still I do miss the negative
reference (i.e. without any detergent). Additionally, it would be nice to
quantify the 'cleanness' of a run (perhaps weighing the dishes before and
after?). Hmm, perhaps we should take this study to the next level ;-).

------
khazhoux
Wow, author runs dishwasher twice a day, sometimes three times a day on
weekend. That's insane. Life-hack: reuse dishes and glasses when possible
throughout the day. Wipe off crumbs after breakfast and lunch and set the
plates aside. Don't freak out if there's a little left-over grease smear on
the dish or dried up fruit-water in the bowl from three hours ago, it won't
kill you. If the dish is actually in gross shape (caked on cheese or whatever)
then fine, throw it in dishwasher and grab a new one.

~~~
dsr_
Four humans, all home all day long. We cook.

Minimum one dishwasher run daily, maximum 3, average is about 2.

If the sink isn't clear, I can't refill the water tank for the chiller. If I
don't refill the water tank, people don't drink enough water.

Running the dishwasher is cheaper than medical bills.

~~~
mdoms
> If I don't refill the water tank, people don't drink enough water

Huh? What's wrong with water from the tap?

~~~
animal_spirits
Not everywhere has perfectly clean tap water. See
[https://www.today.com/news/family-discovers-their-tap-
water-...](https://www.today.com/news/family-discovers-their-tap-water-
flammable-1B7936618)

~~~
ksenzee
> If your water starts fizzing, that could be a red flag.

You don't say.

------
stx
Take it from someone who tried. You can use dish detergent in the washing
machine (clothes) but using laundry deterge in the dishwasher has interesting
results. You will get bubbles coming out all over the place.

~~~
Falling3
The author specifically addresses this.

~~~
efreak
I don't see this. All I see is the author replying to a comment that this is
not laundry detergent.

------
dmix
I would never have believed this was such a controversial topic.

------
parliament32
There are typically a lot more ingredients in detergent, so YMMV depending on
a number of factors, including the composition of your dishwasher (corrosion),
how well you clean the dishes before putting them in (a few drops of Dawn
isn't going to penetrate 3-day-old melted cheese), how much you care about
disinfecting (bleach), etc. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_detergent#Compositi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_detergent#Composition)

------
Havoc
Dishwasher three times a day???

------
mr_woozy
>We run our dishwasher at least twice a day here, and often three times on
weekends.

What the ever-loving fuck?

------
colonwqbang
Lifehacker news?

------
mdoms
But..... you already have dish soap? Just.... wash the dishes?

~~~
chromaton
I think it's your day to do dishes.

