Knock, Knock...Who's There? Dishes...Dishes Who?

Dishes the police! or Dishes a nice place! Two of my kids’ favorite knock, knock jokes which I have heard way too many times. But on the topic of dishes….

Finding a favorite scrubber for hand-washing dishes has been a bit of a journey for me over the years. Of note, I didn’t have a dishwasher for most of my adult life until the past 5ish years, so hand-washing was all I did and having a good (meaning effective and long-lasting) scrubber was relatively important. Before being as mindful about waste as I became, I often used those sponges with a scouring pad on one side, you know, those standard yellow and green ones. In my thrifty ways, I would often cut them in half and I actually came to prefer the smaller size. Then I liked the fancy scrubber brushes (e.g. Oxo) which you could fill with liquid soap and the soap would automatically dispense as you washed or you could push a sort of button. I vacillated between using various sponges and brushes and generally came back to sponges of some sort. As I started to care more about being ‘green,’ I went through a phase of using loofah, which sort of worked but I found myself using WAY more soap because it didn’t really hold water or soap very well. Then there was the period where I saved those plastic produce net bags and made scrubbers out of those, fashioned around an eco-friendly sponge. It did it’s job and I really liked the idea of re-purposing those bags, although I would prefer to avoid those now, I still succumb to them when there is a great deal on a bag of avocados or oranges or lemons (hoping the extinction of those will be a future post when I am ready to commit). However, they weren’t ideal and fell apart more than I wouldn’ve liked. I’ve also used ‘natural’ sponges that are similar to the green and yellow ones—part regular sponge and part scouring pad—but the ones I have found, I haven’t loved, and the scouring side seems to fall apart easily.

In the past several months, I have been using a combination of loofah and wooden scrubbing brushes with natural bristles. I’m ok with my set-up but I am not sure this will be a forever situation. I found a set of scrubbing brushes with bristles of different levels of coarseness and the dish wand brush has a replaceable head. These scrubbers work well with the Dish Washing Block. The loofah I found was designed specifically for washing dishing and it seems to hold water and soap much better than when I had tried to use loofah in the past. I’m not sure if it’s a different part of the plant or at a different level of maturity but it works better and also works well with the bar soap. Part of finding new dish scrubbing products was also influenced by switching to a solid bar soap for dishwashing. I didn’t need something that could hold liquid soap and instead I needed something that could kind of scrub the bar soap to get the soap off more effectively.

As I said, I’m not sure that I am completely sold on this set-up but it works and I would rather keep this up than return to buying any plastic or synthetic sponge or brush to wash my dishes.

From Blueland to Greenland (no, not that one).

A friend tipped me off to Blueland. I didn’t seriously look into it until more recently. Blueland sells cleaning products—soaps and detergents for the kitchen, bathroom, laundry, etc. The products are mostly “green cleaning tablets with natural clean ingredients.” They also sell bottles that you ideally buy once and then reuse and only buy the cleaning tablets as needed after that. They also sell kits. As much as I loved the idea, I didn’t feel like I really needed any of their products. But then I realized that I was running out of a multi-purpose cleaner. I have made my own cleaning products in the past with vinegar and essential oils and other things but I always felt that the vinegar smell was too overpowering. I never seemed to have the energy, motivation, and inspiration to spend a whole lot of time and effort trying to figure out the best recipe. However, in my effort to reduce waste, I really didn’t want to throw out a container and buy another. Then I thought to myself, “Blueland!”

I intended to only order the Multi-Surface Cleaner tablets but in looking at the website, I decided to try the Foaming Hand Soap tablets as well. I have moved to bar soap throughout my household but I do have a few refillable hand soap containers from before and I thought, “Why not try?” While I am fine using bar soap, I completely understand the preference for liquid soap and I figured I could have both on hand. As for the Multi-Surface Cleaner, I was just going to rinse out my old container and reuse it. The process is very easy, you just pop the tablet in with water and it dissolves like Alka Seltzer. You don’t have to shake or stir…just let it sit. I did have to look up online how much water to add as there are no instructions on the packaging. That was a very slight annoyance because it felt like an effort to make it a tiny bit harder when you don’t buy their containers. But I eventually found the information and moved on. Also, I am assuming their containers have a wide enough opening for the tablets to plop right in. For the hand soap, I had to break the tablet in two in order for it to fit in my container and for the multi-purpose cleaner, it fit but it was tight and needed quite a nudge. Not really significant issues though.

I have just recently started using the products but so far the Multi-Surface Cleaner seems to work very well for what I use it for—to clean counters and the table. It also smells lovely. As for the hand soap, I have only tried the Lavender Eucalyptus. It smells great. It’s not super foamy, but it does foam a bit, and it’s pretty thin…the consistency of water. For people that really like their liquid hand soap, this might disappoint. But maybe give it a go and see if you can get used to it? For me, it’s fine. I think it’s nice to have on hand and I will likely keep buying the product but I think my go-to soap will be bar soap. I do like this company’s mission and I am happy to support it.