Guests + Dish Soap + Dishwasher= Holy Suds Batman!

Nothing's better than friends and food and a nice, relaxing night together.

Last night friends of ours stopped by on their way through town, and camped in our back yard. We had a BBQ, and hung out until pretty late. Instead of throwing the dishes in the dishwasher like we normally do, we just put them in the sink, and figured we'd tackle it today.

So while I brought Alex to school this morning, our friends loaded our dishwasher for us, to thank us for being so hospitable.

I came home and as it started and a few minutes later, as our friend was getting out of the shower, I hear, "Uh, Lauren, do you have a mop???"

I walk into the kitchen, and it looks like Old Man Winter dumped about a foot of snow into my kitchen. I knew it definitely wasn't snow, then I realized- there were suds EVERYWHERE!! It was POURING out of the sides and front of my dishwasher- I've never seen anything like it before! Turns out, instead of grabbing the dishwasher soap, they grabbed the dish detergent by accident!

My kitchen floor looks really clean right now, but you had to see me scooping up arm-fulls of soapy foam. I remember reading somewhere that table salt dissolved suds.. so I dumped some salt in the bottom of the dishwasher, pressed resume and hopped online to see if I could find any more information. I found that many people said that 3-4 loads later their dishwasher was still spewing arm loads of suds! I kept reading, and one site said to use vinegar.. so I figured I'd try that too. I dumped the remainder of the bottle of vinegar I use to clean the floors and counters into the bottom of the dishwasher, and hoped for the best. I switched the load to "light" and placed towels around the floor to soak up the rest of the suds, and waited. After that load finished, I put it on it's second run through (with no added soap!) and so far so good!

So should this ever happen to you or someone you know, tell them to add salt to their suds, press resume, then add vinegar and let it run it's shortest cycle. Then do it again and they should be fine.