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Dish Soap

I have tried several dish soap recipes and I can't say that I have been thrilled. Last week, my mission intensified because my dishwasher stopped working! So even though I only use it about 3 times a week, it suddenly seemed like we had piles of dishes everywhere! 

My last dish soap recipe was not my favorite so yesterday I spent 2 hours researching dish soaps. I stumbled across an interesting site written by Dr. Bronner's granddaughter. Many of my recipes included vinegar or lemon juice mixed with the Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap. What I learned was that vinegar or lemon juice should NOT be mixed with Dr. Bronner's castile soap. 
You should know that I am not a science person but there are scientific reasons why the  combination of vinegar or lemon juice does not work with Dr. Bronner's castile soap. 

Well I did not give up, I tried one more time to mix up some dish soap. This time it actually worked! Yay!! A couple of tips, use the soap in hot water or it will seem filmy. If you have not used homemade soaps before, you need to know that they will not be sudsy like the commercial soaps, so don't keep adding more soap, more is not better in this case. The lack of suds doesn't mean that it's not working, it means you have less bad stuff in your soap. Your dishes are getting clean even without the suds.

You may have some residue around the edges of your sink after the dishes are done, so use our Simply Spicy Sink Scrubber to clean your sink afterwards.

After washing the dishes, I soak them in vinegar and hot water. I used 1/2 cup white vinegar to 1 gallon of hot water. Your dishes will be clean and sparkling! I use vintage dishes at my house and they love this!

Dish Soap
2 cups hot water
1/2 cup Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap (I used the unscented)
10 drops of lemon essential oil

Shake the mixture gently in a quart jar then I pour some of the mixture into an old dish soap bottle and store the rest in the quart jar. I use about 7 - 8 squirts per sinkful. I also like the Dr. Bronner's liquid pepperment castile soap, then you don't need any essential oil.

If you would like to read more about Dr. Bronner's and scientific information the website is listed below. The vinegar and soap information is under the February 3, 2011 archive.

lisa.drbronner.com

Love and peace,
Tammi
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