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We have encouraged you to get rid of your dish soap bottle before. There are three good reasons for this:

• Aesthetics and functionality: You can replace a big, heavy, or ugly bottle with something more squeezable, something more beautiful, or just more functional.

• Frugality: When you have a standard bottle in your kitchen you can just buy bags of generic dish soap, or buy it in bulk.

• Water it down: Most dish soap is much too concentrated. In fact, it's so concentrated that it doesn't do a good job cleaning the dishes. This is counter-intuitive but true; it takes a lot more water to lather it up and wash the slick, heavy soap off the dishes. I dilute my dish soap with an equal amount of water, and it actually works better (and lasts twice as long too).

These recycled soda bottles are a very cute option, especially for a bright mod or vintage kitchen.

You can do the same with vinegar or oil, too. I buy my basic olive oil in huge cans and refill a darkly-tinted bottle every week. The dark tint protects the oil from the light, and I have an inexpensive plastic pourer that pours smoothly.

What about you? Do you switch out your dish soap, vinegar, oil, and other kitchen liquids into a reusable bottle? Here are some photos from how other readers have done this.

Related: Pantry Organization: Put Your Grains In Jars

(Image: Monika from House Tour: Monika's Evolving Experiment)

posted originally from: TheKitchn