How many of you were aware that you could not substitute dish soap with dishwasher detergent, and that if you did, you would have six inches of suds across the entire kitchen floor?
Because I sure as hell didn’t.
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[…] Example 1: How many of you were aware that you could not substitute dish soap with dishwasher detergent, and that if you did, you would have six inches of suds across the entire kitchen floor? […]
rob
My son figured this out when he was about 6.
This tells me you eat out a lot.
the miltonian
there are plenty of 80’s comedies that would have told you, but given that I considered the same thing prior to understanding the concept of sudsing agents, you get a pass … and please talk some sense into Andrew Sullivan, he’s so close to rationality ….
jcricket
If you were a democrat you’d have known this.
Or if you were a long-time Mac user, you’d have known it too.
Your problem is too much PC and Republicanism. Rots the brain.
Mike
Dishwasher detergent is also a hell of a lot more abrasive than dish soap. Be careful not to scrub while you’re cleaning it up, or you could ruin the floor and countertop.
S
My roommate demonstrated that experiment in college. Our landlord was not happy when the suds flowed under our door into the stairwell.
Michael Demmons
LOL! I did that years ago!!! Same result!
blondie
Oh Dear.
Well, look at the bright side- your dishes AND your floor are clean now.
srv
Man, if you’re not gay, you need a woman.
Vito
My roommate in college proves Spic&Span is also a bad choice for dishwasher soap.
whippoorwill
I just use a single all purpose cleaner for everything and that be the indomitable Joy lemon scented cleaner. I wash my truck with it, my laundry, floors, toilet bowl, and have even, on occasion, washed my ass with it {too much information?}. Well don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And if certain people disapprove with the handy use of a one stop cleaner, they can just clean it themselves.
Willem van Oranje
Weeeeeeh! Foamparty!
http://www.google.com/images?q=foamparty
Greg
Yes I know. Now. But guess how I learned that lesson as a child….
Incertus (Brian)
You can–you just can’t do it in the same proportions. But you’ve discovered that.
Lavocat
You made me laugh for a full minute. Thanks, I really needed that!
Actually reminds me of the time my friend thought the bidet at a B&B in Europe was a toilet, did his business, and then flushed. What a sight! Yes, ma’am, we’re just a bunch of really STUPID Americans.
I laughed so hard at THAT that I pissed myself.
Chris
Yeah, I sort of discovered this when I was about twenty and home for the summer from college. Thought I’d do the dishes, flooded the damn kitchen. Dad was sleeping in the basement, and mom was on the computer upstairs so the next fifteen minutes consisted of me trying to clean up the mess with a bucket and damn near every towel in the house by myself. Eventually, Mom came downstairs and told me that grandpa had done the same thing last month.
Still, embarassing. Twenty years old, and reenacting that scene from Calvin and Hobbes. “La la la! Just going to get a bucket for no reason! Think I’ll take it upstairs… do do do…nothing wrong in the kitchen, no sir, just felt like gettin’ a bucket… la la la.”
grumpy realist
I had heard of this problem….
Can’t find it on the nets, but somewhere there’s a wonderful picture of an airplane buried in cleaning foam with the caption “See what happens when you forget to turn it off?”
Redleg
I knew it but I too learned the hard way.
Chuck Butcher
Funny thing about “truth in labeling” sometimes it really is. I’ll just bet the cleaner you substituted for said something silly like, “dishwasher soap” and the one used said “dish soap.” There’s another one out there, “laundry soap,” you probably also want to pay attention to that one.
Todd
grumpy realist,
Are you must be thinking of this: http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=10491
Dave
Ha! I did that years ago at my ex-girlfriend’s house. It scared the shit out of her cats. Poor things had no idea what was going on.
PaulW
Hey, me and my college roommate Mikhael tried that back in 1989. Same result too. Consider it a learning lesson…
DougJ
I’ve wondered about this before, but I wasn’t sure what would happen.
gypsy howell
OTOH, dishwashing detergent is pretty useful in the sink, when you — say for example — burn the heck out of a batch of rice in a pot such that it turns into a solid charcoaled black mass at the bottom. Put some really hot water in the pot, put some dishwasher detergent in it, let it soak a bit, and voila- new pot! But yes, if you use dish SOAP in the dishwasher, you can only use a little tiny bit and even then, it doesn’t do as good a job. Bet you can eat off your floors though.
Shirt
FYI: Never, ever flush a paper towel either (unless you are at your “X”‘s house and are on the way out).
louisms
That is such a coincidence! I discovered that same thing the hard way just yesterday evening. Weird.
John Cole
My kitchen floor is the cleanest it has been in ages.
Punchy
Not only is Cole not married, I’m beginning to wonder if he’s ever even had a girlfried before.
Just a head’s up:
You can sub soap for shampoo, but not the other way around
You can sub laundry deterg for dish deterg, but not soap
You can sub wet cat food for dry, but not the other way around, usually
You can sub lighter oil for heavier, but not the other way around, usually.
We need a whole thread of these just to keep Cole safe and sound.
DougJ
You can sub soap for shampoo
You’ve got to be kidding me. Maybe if you’re bald.
Herb
Wasn’t aware until I tried it!
Ralph Dosser
I learned it in my 40s. The hard way.
“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Ron Beasley
Works equally well with laundry detergent – that one I know about.
Mary
I despise my kitchen floor because it’s white and shows dirt immediately. (Not my choice: my engineer ex insisted that the entire kitchen be done in white and light colours so that it would look bigger, thus the high-maintenance floor and the pale blue countertops that have to be scrubbed daily to keep the tea-stains away.)
So here’s your deal, John: move to Canada and marry me. You’ll get health care, a strong currency and a grey market satellite that will bring in all the sports you want. Bring along Tunch and I’ll decide which one of my elderly cats goes on the ice floe to make room. And the only housework you’ll have to do is the dishes, in your own inimitable way.
Deal?
grumpy realist
Todd, thanks! Now you owe me a new keyboard. Actually that’s not the one I was thinking of–yours is even better. (The one I saw had a plane buried up to its sides in a hanger.)
Notes to the peanut gallery: you CAN subsitute soap for shampoo, as long as you use something acidic to rinse your hair with (water with a little bit of vinegar or lemon juice in it works fine.)
I’ve substituted shampoo for body wash with no problems and vice versa. You can actually wash your hair (lightly) with just conditioner. There’s a practice among women trying to grow their hair long to subsitute conditioner for shampoo for a percentage of their shampoos because it’s considered more gentle on the hair. (Even though am trying to grow my own hair, I work out enough that this would not suffice.)
Supposedly baking soda can be substituted for baking powder in a 1:3 ratio (1 tsp baking powder == 1/3rd baking soda); very light cooking oil for the expensive bottle of oil they insisted you buy to oil your paper shredder. Don’t try to substitute olive oil for massage oil–far too sticky. (Falls into the “substitute light oil for heavy oil above but not vice-versa” above)
Have a bunch of cooking substitutions which will post if we ever have a cooking thread. Oh, and the one thing you do NOT want to do if you ever get Japanese “yama-imo” (mountain potatoes) is what I did the first time: peel ’em and boil ’em. The stuff turns into the most incredible glutinous glop that bubbles up out of the pan and crawls all over the kitchen. (After that, John’s substitution would have been needed!)
jake
Let me guess, you mopped up the mess by piling your dirty laundry on the floor and shuffling it around with your feet.
I think you should take Mary up on her offer before you have a serious accident.
Jessica
I too learned this from some ’80s comedy or another. Maybe this was how the foam party was invented.
The Other Steve
Add vinegar… it’ll help bring down the suds.
At least I think it’s vinegar. Try it, and let us know what happens. :-)
Cynthia
Everybody does this once, and only once. It’s as much a part of growing up as puberty. Welcome to the club!
The Other Steve
Thanks ot Willem van Oranje, I’ve learned that there is a whole other Kos you can go visit.
And they have foam parties!
John Cole
Ya know, I am not getting any younger. I should probably take you up on the offer. Although I refuse to accept if you do anything to your old cats. They stay or no deal.
At any rate, in my defense, I never use my dishwasher. I live alone, so I rarely have enough dishes that warrant the dishwasher and I just do them by hand. This week I was swamped, some dishes piled up from two days, and I needed to, but had forgotten I was out of detergent after I had the machine loaded.
The rest, you know.
whippoorwill
Well that does it, I’m starting my own blog so I can get Canadian to proposition me. But they’ll have to come to southern New Mexico. It’s to damn cold in Canada.
kerryinalaska
sorry friend, I live in Alaska and haven’t had a dishwasher for twentyfive years now and even I knew using dish soap for the sink in the dishwasher is a no no. Guess everyone learns in there own time.
hilzoy
I was aware of it even before a friend of mine was visiting my parents’ with me during college, and about half an hour before we were going to fly out the door to catch the train back to school, she started the dishwasher with dish soap in it. But I was a lot clearer about the consequences after we confronted a kitchen full of suds. It was like something out of The Absent Minded Professor.
rachel
grumpy realist is right; you can substitute soap for shampoo as long as you have an acid rinse after. I only do this in emergencies, though, because acid rinses make my hair hard to comb out. (It’s very long.)
Other substitutions / uses of soaps ans detergents:
Dishwasher detergent + hot water is very good for cleaning soap-scummed bathroom tiles and fixtures. You have to wear rubber gloves, though, because it dries out the skin on your hands something fierce.
You can also use dishwasher detergent instead of laundry detergent, but only for non-delicate whites, and you must rinse thoroughly. You might also want to add vinegar to the rinsewater to be sure any remaining detergent is neutralized.
Dish soap is a decent pre-treatment for food spills on your clothes.
Shampoo (w/o conditioners) or mild dish soap + cool water are better than many laundry detergents for washing silk and wool. (Silk and wool are both protein fibers and are damaged by hot water and alkaline soaps.)
here4tehbeer
In the ignorance of my mis-spent youth I once tried shampoo – and I ended up with many inches of peach-scented foam across the kitchen floor. Surprisingly, it was an effective cleaning agent – although to this day I cannot stand the smell of peach. And no, I cannot recall why the hell I had peach-scented shampoo in the house at the time.
They didn’t offer “Home-Ec” in my high school, nor would I have likely taken it if they had. I just chalked it up to learning one of life’s many lessons :(
Mary
Well, it was sticky hot in Toronto today, even after the midday thunderstorm, so there’s probably a dearth of ice floes on Lake Ontario anyway. (Don’t tell the cats, though: it’s the only threat that keeps them in line.)
Conrad's Ghost
I’m in this club. One of the most infuriating/humbling/incredibly funny (in retrospect, of course) lessons I ever learned. Don’t tell anyone; I think this might be one of the few rites of passage remaining that hasn’t been degraded to pop culture meaninglessness. Which tells you a lot about our culture….
dwetzel
You can add me to the count of the clueless who have done this.
I caught it before I had 6″ of suds though.
Steven Hart
The fun doesn’t stop there! The abundant suds will show up again and again until the last traces of dishwashing liquid are gone.
Keith
I’ve done that myself a couple of times myself (forgot about the first time, hence the second). You can still use it, but use half and less dishes. It’s kinda like how HE laundry detergent has to foam less than regular detergent because front loaders and other HEs have greater agitation and foam more (although I don’t believe non-HE will spew suds out of your laundry machine…but try it and let me know!)
Punchy
You’ve obviously never been camping before.
The Other Steve
To clean the garage floor, I use laundry detergent in hot water. Use a hard bristled brush to scrub it in.
It works pretty well at cleaning up oil, gas, etc. and doesn’t foam up like dish soap.
Jimitha
People have actually done this in real life? I thought it was just a sitcom contrivance, like putting a turkey in the dishwasher. For cripes’ sake, it says “do not use in automatic dishwashers” right on the bottle.
Surabaya Stew
Heh Heh Heh…I did the same thing at my job a few years ago; they had a dishwasher and i grew up in Manhattan without one, so I took to kitchen duty with a sense of wonder and joy over being able to use this “newfangled” device. Yeah, I too assumed that all soaps were made equal…thanks for making me feel better about myself!
chopper
Supposedly baking soda can be substituted for baking powder in a 1:3 ratio (1 tsp baking powder == 1/3rd baking soda);
this substitution wouldn’t work in any recipe that requires the leavening action of baking powder tho.
MJ
I assume you haven’t met my sister in law.
Libby Spencer
The universe does work in mysterious ways. I also live alone and recently moved into this new place with a dishwasher which I never expect to use except for this once. Well okay, I moved in four months ago but I just unpacked the crockery and thought, oh how nice, I can wash it in the fancy machine instead of doing it all by hand. I loaded the thing up and realized I didn’t have any dishwasher soap and thought, well gee, since I’m only going to use it this one time — why not just use regular dish soap….
Think I’ll go to the store now.
whippoorwill
Libby Spencer says
I could never use my auto dish washer cause that’s where the mice live. If I ran ’em out they’d just burrow into the soil of my potted plants and that can be a real mess. I want to keep them around in case I go broke and need something to eat. Until then I just call them room mates.
chloeindia
My mother had one of the first dishwashers made in the ealy ’60s and I learned then that all dishsoaps are not created equal. I thought it was hilarious watching all those suds just keep on coming out of the most unlikely places on that machine, but my mother was not amused.
JR
One of my roommates did this, which I thought was among the dumbest things I’d ever seen.
But then, less than a week later, she ruined her bathroom’s plumbing by trying to flush clumping kitty litter, so don’t feel too bad. Just remember in the future that “a spoonful of Joy works for a whole sink of dishes!”
Davebo
I’ve read this entire thread. Where can I go to get back those fifteen minutes?
Oh well, at least I can hawk the best dishwasher ever made.
But don’t put dish soap in it either.
Xanthippas
Best post ever.
Seriously.
mitch
haven’t pulled that one off since i was 13…
RSA
Who would have thought that so many Hints from Heloise readers were BJ regulars?
The Other Steve
Baking Powder is a combination of Baking Soda and Cream of Tartar. You can make powder from soda, but not the other way…
The Other Steve
I’ve long dreamed of having two dishwashers in the house. One for clean dishes, the other for dirty dishes. Cuts out the middleman of having to put them back in the cupboard.
rachel
It will if you have an acid ingredient for the baking soda to interact with. Did you ever mix baking soda and vinegar when you were a kid to watch the bubbles? Well, active baking powder does the same when you mix water into it because it has its own acid already (tartaric acid) for the soda to react with. To leaven with just baking soda, be sure to add sour milk, lemon juice or vinegar to the recipe.
The Sanity Inspector
Guilty, fifteen years ago.
Mary
Yes, you can leaven with baking soda and an acid combined.
Easy Chocolate Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together the following dry ingredients in a 9″ x 9″ nonstick pan:
1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons dry cocoa
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
Once all dry ingredients are mixed thoroughly, create three shallow grooves and pour in:
1/4 cup oil* (in groove A)
1 tablespoon vinegar (in groove B)
1 cup cold water with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract added (in groove C)
Stir everything together well — watch out for the corners! — until you get a batter with no dry lumps.
Bake for 30 minutes or until sides pull away from the pan and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Let cool in the pan before slicing. This freezes well.
* “Oil” means any bland oil suitable for baking, such as peanut, canola or safflower. It does not mean olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, cod liver oil, mineral oil, or WD-40. Substitute at your own risk.
whippoorwill
Ok. But I bet WD-40 would be dandy to spray on a biscuit pan. Them suckers would slide right off. No stick, no fuss.
Kent
I did this when I was about 15. Felt pretty stupid.
James White
Perhaps the only useful thing that came from my chemistry degree.