The Voice of Mom

I hate washing dishes by hand.  Too much apartment dwelling in my single days, I guess.  These days, even though we have a dishwasher and run it at least once a day, I still wash the occasional item by hand.  Since I despise it so, I want a dish detergent that will get the job done and get me in and out.  Enter Dawn PLUS Hand Renewal, just introduced this past August … is it up to the challenge?

The GOOD: Designed to improve the look and feel of your hands, it’s a double-duty product from a brand we know and trust.  It comes in three different varieties: Pomegranate and Splash, Aloe Vera and Lavender and Silk.  The Lavender and Pomegranate varieties include Vitamin E.

The BAD: I tried the Pomegranate dish detergent and the scent was a bit overpowering, so proceed with caution if you’re not a fan of strong scents.  The bottle is also large (22 oz), so may be a bit inconvenient for those that don’t do dishes often.

MONEY MATTERS: It retails for between $2.99 and $3.69 for a 22-ounce bottle, and can be found at your local grocery store or retail locations (Target, for example).

The MOM VERDICT

Cate says: I’m not really brand loyal when it comes to dish detergent.  While I will usually go for a name brand, it doesn’t matter which one and I’ll usually stock up on whatever is on sale.  In the past, I’ve found Dawn’s dish detergent to be a little drying, but this version with the extra Vitamin E seems to fix that problem a little bit.  Were my hands softer?  Hard to tell.  Since I put lotion on my hands multiple times daily, can’t unequivocally point to Dawn as the cause.  It did do a good job on dishes, cutting through the grease with ease, but I wasn’t a fan of the Pomegranate scent.  In the kitchen, with food, I’d rather have a lighter scent and something along the lines of lemon, not something fruity or floral.

Sarah says: Dawn is fabulous for cutting through grease and grime and this was no exception. I turned my bottle over to a clean dish loving lady. Her feedback? She would definitely buy this detergent — she loved everything from the scent (unlike Cate, she didn’t find it too strong or overpowering and liked the fruity scent for dishes) to the clean results it gave. And she said that her hands did feel a smidgen softer for using it. What do you know? It’s a home run.