Stop Buying Dish Soap After Watching This!

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]There are three things you can do today that will replace every bottle of dish soap in your house for about $3. And one of them will make your hands softer while you wash dishes. You'll learn the exact recipe, the science that makes it work better than the blue stuff, and why your hands crack every time you wash a pan. It's not because you have sensitive skin. It's because your dish soap is doing the same thing to your hands that it does to the grease. Every dish you wash requires a surfactant. That's the molecule that grabs oil on one end and water on the other and pulls grease off your plate. Every dish soap on the market, from the blue bottle to the green bottle, is a blend of surfactants.

[00:00:32]The question is which surfactants and what else they packed in alongside them.

[00:00:37]Yes, we've all seen the commercials.

[00:00:39]Dawn takes grease out of your way. One drop cleans a whole sink. Great. Here's what the commercial doesn't mention. Two things. First, the environmental working group gives Dawn Ultra an F rating for health and environmental toxicity. The specific ingredient responsible is methylothiaolinone, a preservative that the American Contact dermatitis society named allergen of the year in 2013. Not an award, a warning.

[00:01:04]It causes allergic contact dermatitis, red, cracked, itching skin, and lab studies suggest it may also be neurotoxic. You are washing your dishes with a product that contains the chemical dermatologists flagged as the year's worst skin allergen. Second, Dawn contains artificial fragrance. And that single word on the label can legally represent over 3,000 undisclosed chemicals, including phalates and formaldahhide releasing compounds. You breathe those while standing over your sink. Now, here's what nobody tells you.

[00:01:34]The same three plant-derived surfactants that commercial detergents use. Sodium laural sulfate from coconut oil, cocoa from coconut oil, and decal gluccoide from corn and coconut are all available in one concentrated bottle that costs $11. And that bottle makes enough dish soap to last your household over 6 months. That bottle is Dr. Bronner's Sal suds. I'm going to show you exactly how to mix it into a dish soap that cuts grease as well as the blue stuff, smells clean instead of like a chemical factory, and leaves your hands soft. And the recipe takes 3 minutes. Here's the buried secret. On the soapmaking forum, one of the oldest online communities for people who make soap from scratch, there's a thread from 2016 where a new member asks for a dish soap recipe that doesn't require wearing gloves. The forum's expert moderator responds, "You're going to be choosing between something that actually works, but you need gloves, and something that you don't have to wear gloves with, but does not clean."

[00:02:29]She's confirmed what soap chemists have known for decades. 100% coconut oil soap. The traditional homemade recipe strips grease from plates and strips natural oils from your skin simultaneously. The molecule that grabs the grease off your pan is the same molecule that grabs the oils off your hands. One mechanism. You cannot separate them with pure soap. This is why every DIY dish soap recipe using castile soap or grated bar soap leaves you with either dirty dishes or dry hands. The thread ends with the moderator saying she's tried many formulations and the only solution she's found is to just wear gloves. People accept it. This problem sat unresolved on forum threads for over a decade. But a second member on that same thread points toward the answer. The magic of the supermarket stuff is better living through chemistry. By choosing the right combination of surfactants, it's possible to create a dish cleanser that works at least as well as coconut oil soap, but with different properties.

[00:03:23]He's describing exactly what Saluds does. Saluds isn't one harsh soap. It's a three surfactant system. Sodium laurel sulfate provides the grease cutting power. Cocoetane makes the blend gentler without sacrificing cleaning ability.

[00:03:38]And diesel gluccoside is an ultra gentle surfactant derived from corn and coconut that lifts oily soils while smoothing the feel on skin. Three surfactants that balance each other instead of one dominant harsh one. This is the combination the soapmaking forum was searching for and couldn't build from scratch. The recipe. Two cups warm water. 1 tbsp kosher salt. This is the thickener and it matters because without it your soap will be watery and hard to use. Kosher salt specifically. Other salts dissolve differently and won't give you that creamy consistency. Stir until fully dissolved. Add one cup of sal suds and stir. You'll see it immediately thicken into something that looks and pours exactly like commercial dish soap. Add four tablespoons of lemon juice or the juice of one whole lemon.

[00:04:22]The citric acid in lemon juice acts as a rinse aid, binding to hard water minerals so they rinse off your glassear instead of depositing as white spots.

[00:04:30]Then here's the part that breaks the soap making forms either or trap. Add two tablespoons of vegetable glycerin.

[00:04:35]Glycerin is a hctant. It draws moisture into your skin and forms a protective barrier while you wash. The surfactants grab grease off your plates while glycerin simultaneously locks moisture into your hands. You don't choose between clean dishes and soft hands. You get both. 10 drops of lemon essential oil if you want a brighter scent or skip it. Saluds already has a light fur and spruce scent from real essential oils.

[00:04:58]Pour into any squeeze bottle. Three minutes done. My wife and I went through the same thing everyone does. Her hands cracked every winter from dish soap.

[00:05:05]She'd finish washing pots, reach for hand cream, and repeat the cycle every night. We tried the gentle brands. We tried Castile soap recipes. We tried wearing gloves. And either the dishes weren't clean or her hands still felt like sandpaper by morning. When I dug into the soap making forums and found that thread where the moderator flat out said, "You have to choose between effective cleaning and gentle hands."

[00:05:26]That's when I realized the problem wasn't her skin, it was the chemistry.

[00:05:30]Every option we' tried was one harsh surfactant. I found Sal Suds built this three surfactant recipe with glycerin and we haven't bought commercial dish soap since. Her hands are the proof. She stopped reaching for hand cream after dish duty the first week and we found out something else. I was cleaning the bathroom one Saturday and ran out of our usual shower spray. So, I tried a few drops of this mix in a spray bottle of water on the soap scum and hard water stains on the glass door. The citric acid from the lemon juice and the decal gluccoside lifted the cloudiness off the glass in one pass. One wipe, clear glass. I'd been buying a separate shower cleaner for $7 a bottle that never worked that well. This did it better for pennies. That spray bottle now lives in our bathroom permanently. Then, my wife did something I never would have thought of. She took our mix straight, just a tiny dab on a damp cloth, and used it on her makeup brushes. Synthetic bristles hold makeup, oils, and bacteria, and most brush cleaners either don't dissolve the oils fully or leave a residue that makes bristles stiff. She washed all her brushes with this, rinsed, let them dry, and every single brush came back softer than when she bought them because the glycerin conditioned the bristles the same way it conditioned skin. She had been buying a dedicated makeup brush cleaner for $12 a bottle. That bottle is gone. Our dish soap recipe replaced it and performed better. One batch makes 24 ounces, roughly the same size as a standard Dawn bottle for about $3 in ingredients. A 32-oz bottle of Sal suds costs $11 and makes three full batches. 72 ounces of dish soap at 1 to2 teaspoons per sink.

[00:07:01]Each batch lasts 6 to 8 weeks. Three batches from one Saluds bottle means over six months of dish soap for $11.

[00:07:08]Kosher salt, glycerin, and lemon juice add roughly $4 across all three batches.

[00:07:13]$15 total for six months. Dawn at $4 to5 per bottle. Six to eight bottles a year runs $30 to $40.

[00:07:22]You cut your cost in half and remove methylia zolinone and undisclosed fragrance chemicals from your kitchen entirely. Add the shower cleaner and the makeup brush cleaner this recipe also replaced. And the real savings from one $11 saluds bottle is closer to $50 a year across three products you no longer buy. Quick clarification. The sodium laurel sulfate in saluds is derived from coconut oil, not petroleum. There is no cancer risk from SLS.

[00:07:48]The claim came from a misread of a 1980s study. The difference between Dawn and Saluds is what surrounds the surfactants. Dawn packs them with methylione petroleum co-surfactants, artificial fragrance, and synthetic dyes. Saluds packs them with cocoa batane decel gluccoside real fur and spruce essential oils and nothing else. Same grease cutting core completely different supporting cast. So here's the protocol.

[00:08:13]2 cups warm water, 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 cup Dr. Bronner's saluds, 4 tbsps lemon juice, 2 tbsps vegetable glycerin, optional 10 drops lemon essential oil.

[00:08:25]Stir. Pour into a squeeze bottle. 3 minutes done. 1 to 2 tsps per sink of warm water. And for bathroom spray, few drops in a spray bottle of water. Links for saluds, glycerin, and kosher salt in the description. Thanks for watching.

[00:08:38]Share this if it helped. See you in the next one.