I’ve seen it a few times on sitcoms: Someone puts Dawn in the dishwasher or 4 cups of laundry soap in the washing machine, go away for a bit and when they come back the room is full of foam. Would this really happen or is this another lie told to me by my TV?
Also, I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a specific example of this but I’m drawing a blank. I can see the scene in my minds eye but cannot name the show it is from. Can someone give me the name of the show where this happened?
A small amount of detergent can produce a huge amount of suds, but I don’t think it could get out of the machines that easily. I guess the suds could get from top loading washers around the drum or through a leaky lid, so you could have a bunch of foam right around the washer. I remember people tossing open detergent bottles in a big fountain at the mall when I was a teenager and huge mountains of foam would build up for a while.
Brady Bunch “Law and Disorder” "law and disorder" brady washing machine - Google Search
This happen in ‘Leave it to Beaver’ , Beaver and a friend dumped half box of
laundry soap in the machine and there was foam all over the place but who know there could been soap in the machine already to get this to happen.
I seen this on some other show too, I think it was ‘I love Lucy’ .
When we were in high school (I’m an old fart now so this tells you how long ago this was) a friend of mine put either laundry detergent or regular dish soap in the dishwasher since he had run out of dishwasher soap. Foamy bubbles started coming out around the edge of the door, and we noticed it before there was too much of a mess on the floor. It absolutely managed to escape from the dishwasher though, and this was a relatively new dishwasher, probably about 5 years old or so. Definitely not an old dishwasher with bad door seals. We didn’t end up with the sea of bubbles in the kitchen, but if we had let it run for a while and hadn’t noticed it, I can imagine something very close to that happening.
It took darn near forever to clean up. The kitchen floor cleaned up easily enough, but getting it all out of the dishwasher took well over an hour. We would think that we had it all cleaned out, and then he’d run the dishwasher for a couple of minutes and the entire inside would fill up with foam. Then we’d clean it out again, repeat, over and over, for over an hour.
ETA: We had both seen the Brady Bunch episode, so he had no excuse. I asked him what he thought would happen, and he said that he thought it was just tv and wouldn’t happen in real life.
I can personally testify to the wrong soap in a dishwasher leading to some suds on the kitchen floor. But it wasn’t as if the kitchen was filled up like in a sitcom.
LOL! I seem to recall this happen to me to in school , a g/f and I did the same thing . Yeah I know this make me an old fart too.
I did that too. Ran out of dishwasher soap, used regular sink-dish-washing soap, the liquid kind. Went out for a walk. Came home to a kitchen floor covered in suds.
My ex-wife did that, but she didn’t catch it before the cycle had completed. God awful mess to clean up all over the kitchen floor.
Yes.
In short, if you ever do this, stop the dishwasher immediately, and pour in some fabric softener. Then run the rinse cycle.
Wine, bubble bath, and a Jacuzzi bathtub can make a very large amount of bubbles, like enough to go almost to the ceiling and begin to seep underneath the bath room door. Every towel available was wet and every surface in the bathroom shined after cleanup.
When I was a little kid my father put dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher and made an ungodly amount of foam all over the kitchen. Some years later (different house, different dishawsher) he forgot the lesson and did it again with the same result.
My oldest sister would do that in her enclosed/sliding glass door bathtub. Bubbles to the ceiling.
Where is the pressure coming from, to force the foam out through the seals in the door?
If I put a little laundry detergent or dish soap in a two-liter soda bottle that’s, say, half full of water, and shake it…will pressure build up inside (perhaps including danger of bursting?)
That exact scenario happened to me, in my first apartment that had a dishwasher in it. I’d never used one growing up, so I tried it out… With dishwashing liquid that I already had on hand (Palmolive). I had no idea that dishwash-ER liquid was different from dishwash-ING liquid, and the compartment read “fill with dishwasher detergent or liquid”, so… Welcome to New Suds City.
Thanks all. I will make sure to never, ever use dishwashing liquid in place of dishwasher liquid!
Oh, it’s not all bad. Kitchen floors need cleaning, too!
Just be sure to move the pet food and water dishes to another room before trying this. 
I’ve seen this in the local Laundromat a few times. Someone will put too many dirty clothes in the washer, add a lot of soap, and think it’s going to get them clean. Then bubbles run out of the machine and onto the floor. They end up with wet, soapy clothes and usually have to run them through again, with no soap.
As previous posters have noted, adding regular dish soap to the dishwasher is a great way to also clean the kitchen floor at the same time.
Did it once in a small apartment. I was out of dishwasher detergent and instead filled the cup with dish soap. Went back to watching TV. Heard the dishwasher start making a funny sound as the pump tried to circulate the now very sudsy water and found the kitchen covered in a soapy froth.
The floor was actually fairly easy to clean and it needed a good cleaning anyway. Getting the dishwasher to defoam enough to pump water again was a real challenge. I think I ended up using baking soda to help dissolve the suds.