Quck answer
To dilute concentrated dish liquid, follow these steps:
1. Fill a clean container with water, leaving enough space for the dish liquid.
2. Slowly pour the concentrated dish liquid into the container.
3. Stir the mixture gently to ensure even distribution.
4. Test the diluted solution by using a small amount on a dish or sponge.
5. If the solution is too weak, add more concentrated dish liquid. If it’s too strong, add more water.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you achieve the desired dilution strength.
7. Label the container with the dilution ratio for future reference.
8. Store the diluted dish liquid in a safe place away from children and pets.
Most dishwashing liquids are concentrated, but some like Bio-Pac dishwashing liquid, are highly concentrated. The label even states to “use sparingly.” Although concentrated soap is great for washing a sink full of dishes, it’s not ideal if you wash plates and utensils individually like 65% of Dawn users. If you’re going to put it on a sponge rather than in the sink, diluting your dish soap makes sense, but it has drawbacks.
How to Dilute Concentrated Dish Soap
Diluting your dish soap won’t save you a lot of money. A 25-ounce bottle of Seventh Generation dish soap costs around $3.27, and the same size bottle of Ivory, Joy or Palmolive costs even less. However, if you’re all about saving, diluting your dishwashing detergent to a 1/3 concentration can help. Fill a bottle 1/3 of the way with dish soap and 2/3 of the way with water.
You can’t do this in the original bottle unless you wait until you’ve used 2/3 of the undiluted product. Instead, you can store it in old dish soap bottles or dilute your soap in a plastic squeeze bottle. The diluted product may even be watery enough to spray, so you could store it in an empty window cleaner bottle and spray it on your dishes.
Reasons Not to Dilute
Using diluted dishwashing detergent in a sink full of water requires three times as much soap to get the same amount of suds and cleaning power. So, if you’re used to washing a lot of dishes in the sink, diluting your dish soap won’t help much.
If you habitually clean dishes one by one using a sponge, diluting concentrated soap in the bottle is the way to go. However, leaving diluted dish soap in a bottle provides a place for bacteria to grow. If you wash your dishes with tepid or cold water, the bacteria could survive long enough to become part of your next meal. This won’t happen if you wash with hot water since hot water kills bacteria, but not everyone waits for the water to heat up.
Storing Diluted Dishwashing Liquid
If you decide to dilute your concentrated soap, consider storing the diluted soap in a container smaller than the one the soap came in. Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap comes in 16- and 8-ounce plastic bottles. Use the soap until the container is empty, then store your diluted dish soap in that container. This way, you’ll use up the dish soap more quickly and give bacteria fewer chances to grow inside the container.