Consumerism Reports: The $6.99 Dish Soap That Makes a Strong Case for Chemicals

This is a recurring series about all my devices. I’d like to clarify that it is NOT a tech column — it’s about spending money to speed up self-transformation, and then buying more stuff when that doesn’t work. And so I have acquired an endless array of devices: from products that promise to make my face look more triangular and the skin around my eyes less purple to ones that shrink specific parts of my salt-logged body. Do any of them work? Previously: The $13.99 Lighter That Doesn’t Detract From God’s Infinite Mystery.

Let me paint a Powerwash picture of it all.

It’s your narrator standing in her kitchen looking beautiful after eating three different kinds of takeout Thai noodles. Her bowls are a mess, and it’s almost 8:30 PM. Bedtime is approaching, and the ensuing feelings of exhaustion are beyond her control. She pulls a trigger on a bottle of Dawn Platinum Powerwash, and instead of a little squirt squirt like she was expecting, an uninterrupted mist of suds reigns down on the dirty dishes, removing the need for hardy sponge usage.

What the fuck! She’s never seen a nozzle like this before. She’s blown away. She’d seen this product at her parents’ house when she was home for Thanksgiving, but didn’t think much of it. She tends to trend toward products that claim they’re less chemical-laden than Dawn or Lysol, the ones that sort of look like they were bottled at an 1800s apothecary where the main chemist had pretty basic taste in 2004-core graphic design.

She is becoming a bit of a maniac about microplastics and carcinogens and is sensitive to smells. Her mother used Windex on a near-constant basis, spraying the countertops in immediate proximity to the chili con carne her daughter was preparing for herself as an afterschool snack, and the scent memory makes her gag into adulthood. But she can’t deny that sometimes, the most manufactured of cleaning products do work the best, and she saw this little device at the store while buying dish soap and paper towels, and thought, hey, maybe this works.

With all the bowls clean without scrubbing in a matter of two minutes, she has free time on her hands. Should she read? She stays up until 10:30 watching videos like this one, testing Dawn Powerwash’s mettle.

Fuck the environment!!