The Popular Cleaner You Should Avoid Using In The Washing Machine At All Costs

Like keys, lingerie, and coffee, there are certain things that don't belong in your washing machine, and dish soap, including Dawn dish soap, is one of them. The internet is full of handy cleaning tips, some of which work like a charm, while others might leave you dealing with a sudsy disaster. 

One such intriguing suggestion involves using liquid dish soap in your washing machine, but the problem with using dish soap in your washing machine is quite similar to why you shouldn't use it in your dishwasher. Dish soap is designed to produce lots of suds and foam. However, while sudsy soap is absolutely necessary when washing dishes, it's a different story for your washing machine. 

If you're really jonesing to use dish soap to remove stains on cotton or poly blend cotton fabrics, there is a workaround. Use it as a pre-treatment. Squirt some dish soap right onto that stubborn spot, making sure that you coat all of the stain and then some, and gently massage it into the fabric. After that, you're safe to toss it into your washing machine and run it on your usual washing machine, along with laundry detergent. 

Using dish soap in your washing machine is a no-go because it won't give your clothes a proper cleaning. It could possibly also leave you with dingy laundry in the long run. That's because soap and detergent work differently. Soap plays the "surround and rinse" game with dirt particles, which works great when you're washing your hands and doing other small tasks. But detergents are the heavy hitters of the cleaning world, and contain surfactants, which help by reducing the surface tension of water and making it spread out evenly. That means dirt and grime don't stand a chance. So, for truly clean laundry, detergent, rather than soap, is the way to go.

Besides that, using soap in your washing machine can mess with your laundry game. Unlike detergent, which can handle hard water like a champ, when soap meets hard water, it creates a notorious soap scum party which isn't friendly with fabric. In fact, it can slowly dull your clothes and weaken the fibers. Using dish soap can lead to an excessive amount of suds which could potentially cause overflows and even damage your machine. Even if there's no visible mess, those suds and foam can linger and create problems in the pumps and drains. So remember when it's laundry day, stick with the detergent and save the dish soap for the dishes.