When we updated our kitchen 14 years ago I had 3 dispensers put in.....dish soap, hand soap and hand lotion. The lotion dispenser fell by the wayside but I still use the dish and hand. We are now doing a full remodel and I am putting two dispensers in again...no miscellaneous, unattractive bottles sitting out.

Hand. I never found a multi-purpose soap good enough for dishes that didn't dry out my hands. Now though, I'm going to try one from the thread on soaps that do both.

For dish soap, i use a little wand loaded with detergent with the scrubber on the end. Love those things.

Mine has dish soap, I like changing hand soap scents and they come in pretty bottles. I love not going under the sink for the dish soap all the time. Cabinet knob area has stayed so much cleaner for it.

i will have one for the first time, and plan to put hand soap in it, and just keep my dish soap in the cabinet under the sink. i don't foresee it being a problem. i am use to having dish soap bottle on one side of my sink and hand soap bottle sitting on the other side of my sink, but i really don't use a ton of dish soap and feel i can reach down for the bottle when i need it.

We've got dish soap in ours and use it for both hands and pots, pans, etc.
We fill it with Dawn and don't find that it drys out our hands.

Just pondered this question the other day and asked folks who use just one product for both hands and dishes what they used. The consensus seems to be Dawn or Seventh Generation. I bought a little bottle of Dawn and put it out by the set tub in the garage which is our current go-to sink. It seems to be fine, but on the other hand, we just finished tiling and grouting our backsplash this weekend. Do you have any idea what thinset and grout and buckets and buckets of grouty water do to your hands?! I've used Seventh Generation at my daughter's house and haven't been impressed, but that may be unfair. My daughter doesn't "believe" in sponges (germs), so it's hard to get anything clean. On this, I don't think we'll ever agree.

SAME QUESTION ... WITH A TWIST ....

I came online to post the same question, but upon searching found this one. I didn't want to have duplicate threads on the same subject, so am adding on. : )

We have a beach weekly rental home that we just built this past year (finished end June). There are 2 sinks in the kitchen that both have places to put in a soap dispenser. We are getting ready to have the dispensers put in and I was pondering the same question ... do you recommend we have hand soap or dish soap ? Whatever we put in there, we will most likely have on a Never MT.

Because we rent it out, I am thinking there needs to be dish soap in the dispenser. We wouldn't want renters washing the dishes with hand soap because they assumed it was dish soap in there. Although it may be fine to wash dishes with hand soap ??? Personally, I rarely ever use dish soap (one bottle lasts years). But, it's not about what I use ... I am only in this kitchen when it is not rented out.

I use dish soap in the clean up sink dispenser and hand soap in the prep sink dispenser. Household members know this but occasionally family and friends helping out in the kitchen wash small items in the prep sink. I don't keep a sponge, dishcloth, or dish brush at the prep sink so most people bring items across the aisle to the clean up sink.

Re. the beach house -- people won't know what's in the dispenser unless you tell them (leave a note taped above it) or they just try it out. When I'm at other people's houses I never know what's going to come out of that little nozzle set into the counter; I think I might have been surprised by lotion once when I was after hand soap so I never assume any more. If I were you I'd put in something that can be used for both dishes and hands. I use 7th Generation dish detergent in my (on-the-counter, not built-in) pump and I don't have trouble with it drying my hands out.

p.s. Just saw the comment above about sponges... I don't believe in them either. [grin] I prefer dish cloths so I can feel stuck-on food through them, and they're easier to get into and around small things too.

I'm all about the combo hand/dish soaps in the dispenser, and was happy to see the Dawn an Seventh Gen recs, haven't tried those.

I recently bought the EO multi-purpose liquid soap (hands, dishes, and about a million other things) at Whole Foods, and I'd recommend it.

The lemon is nice, and I also got the peppermint. Skipped the lavender, not sure I'd like that for dishes.

Link for EO All Purpose soap:

Here is a link that might be useful: Soap

I use dish soap---like others have said, it will work for both hands and dishes. Hand soap will only be useful for washing hands. I like to keep things simple, when possible.

I like dish soap at the clean up sink and hand soap at the prep sink.

We just had the new sink installed, and I used my dispenser for dish soap. Then I loved the convenience of it so much I had another hole drilled on the other side of the faucet for hand soap. Love that too. In fact, we're getting ready to remodel a small bathroom and my DH is asking for a soap dispenser in there also.

re: SAME QUESTION ... WITH A TWIST ....

I like the idea of using combination soap that can be used for both dishes and hands. And I do want to avoid having a sign or label on my beautiful Fire & Ice backsplash (coming soon to a kitchen near me). Plus we already have right many labels thru the house. I love my P-Touch(!!) but want to try to limit things so renters don't think some crazy label lady owns the house. Wish I had thought of having soap dispensers installed in the bathrooms !!

btw, we are in NC too ... Ocean Isle Beach

Ours is used for dish soap -- I wish I had thought about having a second one for hand soap. What a great idea!

I understand the concerns about using dish soap if it tends to dry your hands. That hasn't been a probelm for me, but I do have a child with OCD who tends to wash more than necessary, so for a while I switched from the antibacterial dish soap to a dish soap that was not antibacterial. It was gentler on the hands, and kept my child's hands from cracking (and sometimes bleeding) as they had with the antibacterial soap. Since then, I've diverted my child from constant hand washing to using hand sanitizer in between a normal amount of hand washing, which has solved the problem. Now I can use whatever kind of dish soap I want. But if it doesn't bother your hands, dish soap is a perfectly good hand soap. (My grandmother even used dish soap for shampoo, which I do occasionally for a super cleansing of all hair products from my hair, with no discernible harm.)

I have used soap dispensers for 20 years. Some worked well, some were so bad that they never got used. My current ones are the best I have ever used. Easy to fill, no need to water down the soap, and easy to fill. Plus they have a lifetime warranty and are made in the USA

Here is a link that might be useful: Soap dispensers

I've been pondering the one soap for both purposes idea too. It seems to take forever for me to go thru a bottle of dish soap as so much is able to go into the dishwasher and I currently use hand soap for hand washing. I find regular dish soap too harsh for my hands and I do wash them often while cooking. Anyway, I've been waiting for the soap to run out so I can try another brand. While at my inlaws I noticed that they use ivory dishwashing liquid. It sure was gentle on my hands. I'm not sure how well it washes dishes. Anyone have experience on that?

Ivory dishwashing soap is excellent for dishwashing; unfortunatly, I'm allergic to it so I sneeze and runny-nose it through a sink of dishes. Fortunately, this is rare and Ivory dishwashing and laundry soap is often recommended for the sensitive types.

I needed to make this decision last fall and scoured the back threads for advice, including this thread. In the end I decided on using Dawn for both hands and dishes. It's been great and my hands don't dry out any more than usual. It might be good to tell your friends what's in there though. One of my friends turns out to have reactive skin which doesn't do well with dish soaps. This never came up with hand soap in the bathroom, so I was kind of taken by surprise.

Ours is loaded with Palmolive.

The wife and I use it for dishes and hands, the daughter has her own bottle of 'hand soap' on the counter now that she is in the 'teen years.'

No icky dish soap for her anymore.

We just renovated our kitchen and had a soap dispenser installed. The company who did the kitchen said that dishwashing soaps shouldn't be used in the soap dispenser, as he thought it would clog up the dispenser. My neighbor uses dishwashing soap in her soap dispenser. Can you recommend a good dishwashing soap that also will not clog up the soap dispenser.

Just don't use CASTILE SOAP!! I put peppermint castile soap in my dispenser and the oil in the soap clogged the dispenser and was a pain to remove.