Tonight Zack learned that dish soap is not the same as dishwasher detergent. His chore was doing the dishes this evening, and the box of (granular) dishwasher detergent was empty. Looking under the sink, he spotted a big jug of soap and poured some (liquid) into the dishwasher. Away he went.
A little while later, I was beating Kyra at Mario Kart and Zack said, “Uhh, Dad, you might want to come look at this.” Suds were gushing out of the dishwasher, spreading all over the kitchen floor. Quite a sight. He explained what he’d done, which was really just an honest mistake because sometimes we have liquid dishwasher detergent.
Cleaning it up proved to be interesting. The dishwasher refused to drain, and since it was in the middle of a wash cycle all we could do was cancel and run a rinse. Well, that made things worse. It’s pretty amazing how many bubbles a quarter-cup of concentrated dish soap will make. Finally, I pulled out the shop vac and literally sucked up all the bubbles. A rinse cycle later, things seemed almost back to normal. The dishes still had a coating of bubbles, which probably means we’re going to taste soap in our food for the next few days.
Zack worked hard to help me clean it up, asking several times, “Am I in trouble?” I assured him he wasn’t, but hopefully he learned a lesson. Funny stuff.