Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 2 - Dish Washing

Warning!  This is a chatty prelude to how I figured out how to avoid plastic dish washing liquid bottles!

  We actually have stopped using our dishwasher.  I am, in a way, ashamed to admit to spending money on it. We have a not that old GE Profile.  It's fancy-schmancy, stainless steel.  The people of House Hunters would gush over it.  I was excited when we got it because we had suffered for years with a very noisy dishwasher that sometimes decided to flood and didn't seem to get the dishes very clean, even though I was very good at rinsing them thoroughly.  Well, this newer dishwasher is very quiet.  It also takes an absurdly long time to run a normal cycle and the dishes still didn't get very clean (at least not to my standards!).

Then I read an article that explained why your clothes and dishes don't seem to get very clean anymore.  It is because of environmental regulations on the types of detergents, water usage and temperature, etc.  Ah ha, I thought.  It is not just me imagining things! (As someone who cares about the environment, I think it is absurd to waste electricity and resources building machines that then aren't very useful!).

In the meanwhile we have a long term house guest staying with us from Cote D'ivoire, a west African country located next to Ghana.  She mentioned that no one in her country uses dishwashers.  If they do happen to have a dishwasher they just use them mostly as big drying racks.  She said, it takes so long to wait for clean dishes and they don't seem that clean anyway.  It's a waste of electricity.  Now we are a household of 7 people currently.  My husband and I, my 21 and 18 year old sons and my 15 year old daughter, plus our houseguest and her little toddler.  Back when I had five little children around, I don't think I could have faced hand washing dishes.  I wasn't made of tough stuff!  But now that everyone is older, hand washing dishes seems easier.  Not that my kids really do much washing up!  They are spoiled!  I should make them pull their own weight!  But truth be told, my husband and 21 year old are out at work all day so really they only eat in for dinner and even then, not always. They are not big mess makers.  That leaves just 5 to really clean up after.

My houseguest loves to help out around the house, so we've started a pattern that has been established for a couple months now.  I wash up the dishes in the a.m. and she washes up at some point in the late afternoon.  I often come down to dinner dishes left in the sink to be cleaned in the morning, but I am fine with this.  I have a morning routine.  First I feed the pets.  Then I make coffee and pray and read for a bit.  Then I check email and twitter.  Then I put on a Great Courses video lecture series (I am working my way through The Foundations of Western Civilization taught by Professor Noble of the University of Notre Dame*).  These lecture are 30 minutes long.  I prop up my laptop next to the microwave, don my rubber gloves and commence to wash.  First I take everything that has been dumped into the sink out.  I take an old plastic bowl from a by-gone lettuce spinner and I fill it with soapy water and dump all the cutlery in that to soak.  Then I scrub all the pots and pans and stack them in the dishwasher.  Then I rinse the sink and fill it with soapy water and wash the plates, bowls, glasses and cups, rinse and stack them in the drying rack on the counter over the dish washer.  Lastly, I rinse the cutlery and stack it either in the dishwasher or drying rack.  This usually takes no more than the length of a lecture.  Because I am listening to it, the time flies by and I am pleasantly distracted from my chore.  I've always enjoyed splashing in warm water anyway.

Now I know not everyone has the luxury of 30 minutes in the a.m. to hand wash dishes.  I've been there!  I am in a season of my life where I can do it.  Every life has its seasons!

Anyway, back to being plastic free!!!!  So I usually buy the dishwashing liquid from Trader Joe's in a plastic bottle.  But if I want to avoid plastic, what could I do??

I've been researching lots of plastic free options and Life without Plastic is a great resource.  Beth Terry is the giant on whose shoulders I am standing.  She pioneered trying to live plastic free and has done lots of research.  On her blog someone suggested just using a bar of Dr. Bronner's Castille soap.  So I bought one (I happened to be at Whole Foods, but you can purchase these at many different stores) that had citrus in it because I figured it would help cut any grease.  It is true that you don't get the suds you get with the liquid soap, but it gets everything sparkling clean.  There is no soapy residue.  When I fill up the sink with hot water, I shake the cake of soap around a bit to get the water nice and soapy.  When I need extra soap on my sponge, I simply wipe it a few times over the cake of soap sitting in a saucer by the sink.

My other plastic free go to is the lowly Brillo pad.  I don't bother to buy the brand name, just the lowly knock offs.  These are good for when you really need to scrub.  They come in a cardboard box and are made out of steel wool.  I got mine at my local Giant.

The sponges I am currently using are the flat dehydrated kind that Trader Joe sells.  They are made from vegetable cellulose apparently. They do come wrapped in plastic.  I bought a bunch, so I am going to wait until they are used up before I figure out how to get new sponges without any plastic whatsoever.  Every once in a while I throw these sponges into the washing machine when I wash my dish towels.

I know most people do want to use their dishwasher.  So if you do, Trader's Joe does sell powdered dishwasher detergent in a green cardboard box with a metal spout. It works as well as the other liquid detergents that are sold in plastic jugs.  I know because before I converted to TJ's detergent, I used Cascade simply because it was the brand my mother always bought.  But when I switched to TJ's I actually thought it did a better job cleaning.  I am assuming you can find other brands that are made of biodegradable packaging.  And I personally can't understand the need for those pods they are marketing now which I think always come in plastic tubs anyway.

So that's my new plastic free dishwashing habit!

*Buy Great Courses video series when they are having one of their frequent sales.  You can pay as much as 70% off these prices.)