Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Dish Washing Soap
sugnim
Can anyone recommend a good soap for the dishwasher? I've tried a few of the "natural" brands, but they never seemed to get the dishes clean. So, I switched to Cascade, but they make the dishes smell like soap & give a slightly soapy flavor to anything served on the dishes. Any recommended brands or concoctions? Thanks!
A Saucy Wench
gonna say maybe the problem here is not the soap but the dishwasher.
I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets
"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7
Cascade works fine for me. If it is making your stuff taste like soap, then either you have a cranky dishwasher or you are using too much.
Side note... There's dishwashing detergent and dishwashing soap. Many moons ago at my house, we had both. And both were liquid. The detergent was for the dishwasher. The soap was basically like palmolive, for doing stuff in the sink. I got my wires crossed one day and used the soap in the dishwasher.
Lemme tell you, soap =/= detergent.
I filled up my kitchen with suds that came poofing out of the dishwasher. It was Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch, and I Love Lucy come to life. One of the goofiest things I've ever done ever.
Hmm . . . could be, I guess. I've never owned one before this one. We bought it about 2 years ago so I assumed it should work just fine.
Cascade works fine for me. If it is making your stuff taste like soap, then either you have a cranky dishwasher or you are using too much. Side note... There's dishwashing detergent and dishwashing soap. Many moons ago at my house, we had both. And both were liquid. The detergent was for the dishwasher. The soap was basically like palmolive, for doing stuff in the sink. I got my wires crossed one day and used the soap in the dishwasher. Lemme tell you, soap =/= detergent. I filled up my kitchen with suds that came poofing out of the dishwasher. It was Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch, and I Love Lucy come to life. One of the goofiest things I've ever done ever.
dh did this once as well. Fortunately this was in a house crappily built and our house was tilted towards the garage so it all ran that way and not on to the family room carpet.
Seventh Generation works pretty well for us.
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
Proboscis Colossus
My wi a friend I've known for a long time and her friend were house-sitting for one of their college profs awhile back, before we were marr really good friends, and I came over to pick her up for something, don't remember what. When I got there, they were loading the dishwasher, and as I watched, they poured dishwashing soap in the reservoir. I almost said something, but wasn't sure there was a difference and besides, these were two basically grown women, right? Far be it from me to instruct them in domestic matters.
Hilarity ensued. It is amazing just how many suds can come out of that little capful of soap, isn't it?
MTA: Anyway, I like Wal-mart's in-house brand. I even recall seeing a Consumer Reports rundown in which they rated that specific generic brand very highly, if not at the top.
"God guides us on our journey, but careful with those feet." - David Lee Roth, of all people
not bad for mile 25
Must be common. SIL did it once. Years later, another guy was saying soap is soap, and getting ready to make the same mistake. I had to be quite forceful with him.
*Puts on nerd cap*
Okay, so for the past three months, I have essentially been designing dishwashing detergent for a living.
My boss, who has been doing it for years, says that Finish Quantum (specifically the Quantum, not simply the regular Finish) is the best stuff out there. This is, ironically, not something that our company makes. Though, we don't usually make stuff that gets used in home dishwashers, mostly stuff for big restaurant dishwashers.
I personally use the regular Finish tablets in the big tub from Sam's Club, and they work well for me.
If you have harder water, what you pick is more important to be sure you don't have white junk on your glasses. I think that is really where the Quantum shines, because it controls hardness in water really well.
I wouldn't worry too much about "natural" detergents if they aren't working - Finish, for example, has a more ingredients than something like Seventh Generation, but looking at them closely, the important ingredients are pretty much the same, and all the extraneous stuff in the Finish is pretty mild stuff. Not to mention, most of the little "extras" to control water hardness, foaming, etc. are used at concentrations less than 100mg per liter of water, which means at most half a gram of the stuff will show up in an entire load of dishes.
Natural detergent companies also make a big deal about phosphates, but pretty much nothing on the shelf has phosphates anymore, since they were outlawed about two years ago. Unless you find a several year old box of detergent, nothing you buy will have phosphates in it at this point. This is also why detergents don't work as well as they used to, because phosphates were like magic (unfortunately, toxic magic), and now we have to use 7 different things to try unsuccessfully to replicate all the things that phosphate did by itself.
*Removes nerd cap* (oh, who am I kidding )
My wildly inconsistent PRs:
5k: 24:36 (10/20/12)
10k: 52:01 (4/28/12)
HM: 1:50:09 (10/27/12)
Marathon: 4:19:11 (10/2/2011)
>> I think that is really where the Quantum shines
Nice.
I think I'm missing out on some of the potential fun in washing dishes. Maybe I should try some of this in the dishwasher.
So right after you posted this I started having the same problem with my dishwasher. soapy smell and taste. (seriously, did you jinx me?)
Wipe down the surfaces inside your dishwasher well - door, sides, bottom. Remove any residue. A magic eraser works well for this.
Fill the soap cups completely with white vinegar and run an empty load. Put white vinegar in the rinse agent cup.
Use the extra rinse cycle if you have one.
If there is a lot of soap buildup in the filter you may need to repeat the vinegar cycle a few times.
Chasing the bus
We've been using Miele brand soap, in a Miele brand dishwasher. We have to go to the high end appliance store where we bought the dishwasher to buy the soap. After years of living with another high end dishwasher that didn't clean dishes well, what we have works well, for now.
“You're either on the bus or off the bus.” ― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
**Loves the stories about dishwasher mishaps**
Been there.
30 years ago.
Once.
Never again.
If only they would put *why* not to do stuff on packaging.
Jeff