We’ve noticed a recent surge in people wanting to use dish bars to clean their dishes. Likely due to the money savings – these things are incredible!
I make dish bars that we sell in our shop (sold out right now, but more will be available 4/12/20), and we get a lot of questions about how to use them. We are asked this so often in fact, that I decided this blog would be dedicated to “how to use a dish bar”.
First things first: What is a dish bar?
A dish bar is essentially, a bar of soap. Not just any soap though, and I wouldn’t suggest taking a shower with one. Dish bars are designed with high cleansing in mind, whereas hand and body soap is made with a focus on moisturizing skin which includes extra oils – something you definitely do not want for your dishes.
Second: What if I don’t hand wash dishes?
A fair point. Most people use commercial dish washers and don’t hand wash dishes. I’m certainly not oblivious to that. Until we moved out to our property, we used a dishwasher as well. However, I have never been to someone’s house that had a dishwasher, that didn’t also have a bottle of dish soap under their sink for those times when they just have to hand wash something. It might be that pot or cookie sheet that is too big to fit in the dishwasher, or that electric skillet that isn’t submersible. Regardless, I think everyone hand washes something once in a while.
Third: Why use them?
Well, mainly – the savings. Savings to your pocket book and savings to the environment. More and more, society is trying to get away from “one-use” plastics – and this includes plastic bottles of dish soap. What a tremendous effect it would have on our landfills if everyone stopped using these bottles!
Savings to your pocket book comes in the form of water. I don’t know about you, but if you are on city water, have you noticed how much your water bill actually is? Not just your water though – your sewage bill as well! So, below, I am going to explain how to use these, in which case you will see where this water huge savings is coming from.
How do you use these??
This is not a new concept – dish bars were around long before liquid soap was. Here is what you do:
Scrape off food scraps into your garbage (or your compost)
Turn your hot water on and rinse/wet your dishes
DO NOT FILL YOUR SINK UP WITH WATER
Wet your loofah (or sponge, or cloth… whichever you use)
Rub your loofah on your dish bar
Cut your water off
Using your loofah, wash your dishes just as you would if you had a sink full of water
Set the now sudsy dishes in the rinse side of your sink
Turn your hot water back on
Rinse your dishes.
DONE!
Dishes are clean (the high cleansing of dish bars do a great job)
Time saved (not having to fill a sink up)
Money saved (again, not having to fill a sink up)
More money saved (very little water going into the sewage)
Environment saved (no plastic bottle going into the landfill)
Again, not a new concept – but a forgotten one . If you do this now, or decide to try it out, please comment below and let me know your thoughts.
Till next time, Happy Saving!