There is, it seems, a big difference between “dish soap” and “dishwasher soap.”
Mainly, the difference is that if you put “dish soap” in the dishwasher, your entire kitchen will fill with suds and the lady downstairs will call the Super about the leak in her ceiling and the Super will get mad at you.
That is all.
I also learned this the hard way. However, I had no Super to report to, and my (then )3 year old son had a ball playing in the five foot bubble mountain.
So it wasn’t all bad.
:smack:
Yes. Most detergents are interchangeable: dishsoap, handsoap, shampoo, bodywash, clothes detergent…if you run out of one, you can use the other in its place.
But not dishwasher detergent. It doesn’t, as you now know, suds nearly as much as other detergents.
For future reference, there is no right amount of dish soap you can use in your dishwasher. If you use just a little bit, you’ll get a very thin layer of bubbles all over your floor.
I did that many years ago. My parents had to run some errands in the next town, and wern’t home when I got back from school. I thought I would be “the best kid ever” and do the dishes. Couldn’t find the dishwasher soap so I used some of the stuff behind the sink. Turned the dishwasher on, and went to watch TV. Came back to unload it, and found the kitchen filled with bubbles. Thought my parents were going to kill me. They just got a big laugh out of it. We also got a nice extra clean kitchen.
-Otanx
On the other hand…we once accidentally got dishwasher soap instead of dish soap at the clinic. That crap is slimy like snot and nearly impossible to rinse under a regular faucet flow, and the complete lack of suds had me washing things multiple times just to convince myself that the bowls were clean.
The two can definitely NOT be interchanged.