Take a look at these vintage soda bottles, recycled by Monika into easy-pour bottles for her oil and vinegar. This is an easy way to make your kitchen a little nicer and reuse something in the process: get rid of your ugly branded dish soap bottle!
We have encouraged you to get rid of your dish soap bottle before. There are three good reasons for this:
- Aesthetics and functionality: You can replace a big, heavy, or ugly bottle with something more squeezable, something more beautiful, or just more functional.
- Frugality: When you have a standard bottle in your kitchen you can just buy bags of generic dish soap, or buy it in bulk.
- Water it down: Most dish soap is much too concentrated. In fact, it's so concentrated that it doesn't do a good job cleaning the dishes. This is counter-intuitive but true; it takes a lot more water to lather it up and wash the slick, heavy soap off the dishes. I dilute my dish soap with an equal amount of water, and it actually works better (and lasts twice as long too).
These recycled soda bottles are a very cute option, especially for a bright mod or vintage kitchen.
You can do the same with vinegar or oil, too. I buy my basic olive oil in huge cans and refill a darkly-tinted bottle every week. The dark tint protects the oil from the light, and I have an inexpensive plastic pourer that pours smoothly.
What about you? Do you switch out your dish soap, vinegar, oil, and other kitchen liquids into a reusable bottle?
(Image: Monika from House Tour: Monika's Evolving Experiment)
Originally published 2009-04-28 - CB
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I use an old San Pelligrino glass bottle for my Olive Oil- the green glass helps protect the oil, and it looks like on the counter. Plus I buy Olive Oil in huge tubs, so it's way easier to pour.
Never thought of doing it with soap, though...
This came just in time for me to finish off an Izze bottle... I never thought about repurposing them until now, but i LOVE the white label on them. Good idea, AT :)
I think glass soap me = increased household use of First Aid kit.
For the oil and vinegar, though, it's cool.
@JosieDaisy: I'm as uncoordinated as humans come, and I've never had an oops. (Well, I've dropped the bottle, sure, but never very far, and never causing breakage. Depends on what your sink's made of, I guess -- I've got stainless.)
Anybody have recommendations on a good-quality plastic pourer? I bought an olive oil bottle for dish soap years ago, but the water content of the dish soap caused the metal pourer to rust, so I'd have to poke with a dish brush to clear out the gross rusty goo every so often, and just tossed the thing and switched back to an old plastic hand lotion pump bottle. I'd prefer to have my pour-bottle back, though, with a rust-free spout.
Oh, and co-sign Faith re: watering soap down. You don't have to wait as long for the stream to start, you end up using less, and you don't have to work as hard to spread it out or rinse it off.
where do the tops come from?
On a cautionary note, be careful doing something like this if you have kids in the house.
I remember a story here (UK) of a child unknowingly drinking cleaning products from a repurposed lemonade bottle.
It did not end well for the child.
I did that at primary school (turps I think) when I was 6. Hiccupped all evening, never told my mum or a teacher. But I have to say the turps had been decanted into a small fizzy drinks bottle and a group of children where trying to get others to do it. I was a naive little one. But there is definitely a need to be cautious round small kids.
I am a 42yr mum myself now, so it ended fine for this child.
Also why do you need to water down dishwashing detergent? Don't you just squirt a tiny bit in sink full of hot water?
Bed, Bath, and Beyond carries the spouts. Amazon.com and other websites also sell many variations if you search for "bottle spout" or "bottle pourer".
Question: Is there any brand of eco-friendly dish soap that comes in the inexpensive bags like you mentioned? Repurposing a soda bottle for dish soap is great, but not if you end up putting hazardous chemicals into the groundwater as a result.
I don't think it's a great idea to use for dish washing soap. It can make it very slippery and mighr break on you. I am using recycled liquor bottles for drinking water in the house. I keep one on my night stand with a glass on the side and two at the dinner table and a cold one in the fridge. It looks better than having plastic water bottles around.