Things Your Mother Never Told You: Dish Soap

This past weekend Shawn and I went upstate to see his family. While up there, we were given, among other things, a freezer worth of packaged meat, knives, a crock pot, night stands, spices a t.v. and some dishes. While Shawn was studying this morning, I thought I would be a good little house girlfriend, and clean the kitchen, clean out the cupboards, and put everything away.

No good dead goes unpunished.

Our house is filthy from top to bottom. We have been scrubbing base boards, cleaning out closets and cupboards since the day we moved in. The kitchen has been no different. Today, I discovered three cupboards filled with the landlords things. Shawn and I have been using one, tiny cupboard for everything. I started to unpack our kitchen supplies from boxes, and replace them with his. The first box emptied was the dish set bestowed upon us by Shawn's brother. I loaded them all into the dishwasher, along with some other dishes that needed washing as well. I scoured the room for dish tablets. Nothing. I found Dawn soap. I looked the bottle over, and poured a very small amount into the closable soap dispenser. After all, soap is soap...right?

I continued on my merry little way, gleaming with pride on how nice the kitchen was going to look when Shawn came down stairs. Thought of how excited and proud he would be when he saw that I had cleaned out the cupboards and given all of our new things a proper home. Suddenly I heard my name exclaimed.

"EMILY!"

I spun around to see Shawn staring at the dishwasher, and the floor directly beneath it completely covered in soap bubbles. The dishwasher was vomiting bubbles, and had no intention to stop.

"Go get something!" Shawn said  trying to scoop some of the bubbles up and stop the dish washer.
I ran upstairs and grabbed all of the towels I could find. When I got back to the kitchen, Shawn had covered his face in bubbles. Think Santa Clause beard. He proceeded to ladle the bubbles out of the bottom of the dishwasher and dump them into the sink. After draining the machine, and re-running it twice, the bubbles were finally gone. And in case you were wondering, my dishes were spotless.

Todays lesson in "Things Your Mother Never Told You" is that dish soap, while effective when used in a sink, on your hands, or dribbled over a grease covered pan, is NOT a suitable replacement for dish washer soap. No matter how little you think you used...

No, this is not a stock photo from the web. This is my actual dishwasher.