The Cleanest Kitchen Routine: How to Switch to Natural Dish and Hand Soap
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Switching to natural cleaning products in the kitchen doesn't require a complete overhaul. Dish soap and hand soap are the easiest starting point. You use them every day, and the alternatives work as well as what you're replacing.
Here's what the switch looks like.
The case for solid dish soap
Most liquid dish soap is mostly water. You're paying for packaging, shipping weight and a lot of water, plus a relatively small amount of actual cleansing agents and whatever synthetic fragrance and colorants went into it.
Solid dish soap is concentrated. One 6 oz bar typically lasts a few months of regular use in a household that cooks daily. You rub a wet brush or sponge over it. It lathers right away, cuts through grease and rinses clean.
The Sea Spray Soap dish bars are cold process, made with coconut oil, olive oil, stearic acid and castor oil (or the coconut-free version with tallow, sunflower oil and castor oil). No synthetic fragrance. Seven scent options plus unscented.
The main adjustment: you need a decent brush or scrubbing cloth to work with it. If you're a sponge-only person, a compostable sponge works well. Some people prefer a wooden dish brush. Either way, after a week with a solid bar, the liquid stuff feels like a step backward.
Foaming hand soap tablets
The foaming hand soap tablets solve the problem of running out of hand soap and having to remember to buy more, and they do it without a cabinet full of plastic refill bottles.
The setup: a foaming dispenser, one tablet, warm water to the fill line. The tablet dissolves in about 30 minutes, and the dispenser works like a regular foaming hand soap pump. When it's empty, add another tablet and water.
The Sea Spray Soap Foaming Hand Soap Tablets use sodium coco sulfate and cocamidopropyl betaine as the cleansing base, with a gluconolactone and sodium benzoate preservative system. Both surfactants are coconut-derived, so choose a different hand soap if you avoid coconut. The scent lineup includes Lavender, Eucalyptus & Mint, Bergamot & Citrus, Basil & Mint, Driftwood, Wild Child and Unscented.
What the full kitchen counter setup looks like
The combination that works well for daily use:
- A solid dish soap bar on a draining soap rest next to the sink
- A foaming dispenser with hand soap tablets
- A compostable sponge or wooden dish brush
That's three items replacing what was probably four or five plastic bottles. No restocking trips. No measuring. No synthetic dish soap fragrance.
Making the transition
The most practical approach is to run out of what you have and then replace it, rather than throwing out half-full bottles. Start with whichever runs out first. For most households that's hand soap, then dish soap.
The adjustment period is about a week. The lather from solid dish soap is different from liquid. It's more concentrated, and you'll use less than you think you need at first. The foaming hand soap works the way it always has, just without the single-use plastic.
