Review: Battle of The Dishwashing Soaps

June 24, 2008 · Filed Under · 6 Comments 

A few weeks ago the folks at Cascade sent me a big ol’ bottle of their new liquid Cascade Complete dishwashing soap along with a bottle of their competitor Electrasol soap and asked if I would test them out and do a review on my blog. The fact that they actually sent me big bottles rather than small samples impressed me and encouraged me to give it a try.

Cascade picked the right house as we don’t lack dirty dishes to say the least! We typically wash our dishes off before loading them in the dishwasher, which I always thought was a waste of water but my wife insisted that the dishes would not get clean otherwise. But the folks at Cascade claimed that there was no need to rinse off the dishes or silverware first with their product, so we tested both ways. Here are our results.

Dishes Rinsed First

  • Cascade Complete. Dishes came out squeaky clean.
  • Electrasol. Dishes came out squeaky clean.

Dishes Not Rinsed At All

  • Cascade Complete. We got home from our recent camping trip and we just loaded all our dirty dishes in the dishwasher, including a spatula that I had used on hamburgers. This thing had caked on grease, cheese, and mountain dirt and I thought, “No way, it would take an act of God to clean this bad boy!” My wife and I were amazed when we opened up the dishwasher and everything, including the spatula, was squeaky clean. In case you haven’t noticed, “squeaky clean” is my scientific word of choice for this post.
  • Electrasol. A few days later we had some greasy dinner plates with cheese and oily salad dressing on them and so we thought it was a perfect time for a rebuttal by Mr. Electrasol. He was not up for the challenge and lost his license to serve dirty dishes. The stuff came out with a grease residue on them. Now as a guy, that is just added flavor for the next meal, but my wife was not quite so forgiving of poor Mr. Electrasol.

So there you have it, Cascade Complete won this exciting battle. It of course does cost more, but I am starting to wonder if you would get back that savings in less water usage from not having to pre-rinse the dishes? Any thoughts?

And by the way, any other companies want to send me their products, I would be more than happy to test them out.

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6 Responses to “Review: Battle of The Dishwashing Soaps”

  1. DJ FuzzyK on June 24th, 2008 4:46 pm

    Kyle,

    Can’t wait to see you test further products just so I can compare notes with my own experiences.
    I stopped using Cascade long ago since it’s the most expensive one on the shelf. I’m intrigued by the idea of loading up the dishwasher and not pre-washing, as this takes up a lot of precious post-dinner time each evening. I wonder how it will tackle the reside left on our glassware by Chapstick? Hmmm…

  2. Aaron Stroud on June 24th, 2008 10:57 pm

    Hmm, it’d be interesting to see the math on water savings (water, sewer, & water heater). Since we’re on a well and septic system, I think we’ll just hand washer or rerun any extremely dirty items like your camping dishes.

  3. Kansas Mom on June 25th, 2008 8:29 am

    We had great luck with those little Cascade Action Packs. Last time I checked at Sam’s, they were $0.15 each (1 per load). Everything came out squeaky clean every time. The dishwasher we have now, though, is terrible and if there are any flecks of food on any dishes, they end up spread throughout the washer after a load is supposedly clean. So now I rinse everything and if there are crumbs, I just wash it by hand. We like using a more environmentally-friendly detergent (currently Eco-Palmolive something without phosphates) and that works fine as long as I’m selective about what goes in. As far as the environment, it’s better not to rinse if your dishwasher can handle it, as most new ones can even without the super-great Cascade detergent. A lot of people with well water have to pay for the electricity to pump it up, so being careful with water is still worth-while.

  4. Kansas Mom on June 25th, 2008 8:30 am

    Also – set your dishwasher not to dry the dishes. Just open the door a crack when it’s done and let the water steam off. You’re saving electricity. (We move stuff to the drying rack if we need to load it up again right away, but usually all our dishes are clean at that point.)

  5. Kyle on June 25th, 2008 1:55 pm

    @ DJ Fuzz, thanks for the comment. Tell ya what, that camping spatula was absolutely nasty, I have a feeling that Cascade Complete would do the trick on Chap Stick, I will have to test it!

    @ Aaron, I’d be curious to. Would be hard to measure though. At least find the time to do it. :-)

    @ Kansas Mom, great tips on the environment and opening up your dishwasher to let dishes air dry. I try to do that when I am around.

  6. Jennifer on June 30th, 2008 5:12 pm

    Good to know, I hate rinsing.

    I wonder how Kirkland (costco) stacks up in a direct test. We switched to that from Cascade Complete powder and I don’t have any complaints.

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