I'm not a minimalist or anything (far from it, to be honest) but every once in a while, I decide I don't need both dish soap and hand soap on my crowded kitchen counter and shove the latter under the sink.
Washing my hands with dish soap has always seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The way I see it, I'm already exposing my hands to dish soap every time I forget to put on gloves to hand-wash dishes—which is 99% of the time I hand-wash dishes.
But a couple years ago, when someone challenged my hypothesis, I consulted an actual scientist to prove myself right.
Javon Ford, a Los Angeles–based cosmetic chemist who sets people like me straight on TikTok and Instagram, explained that washing your hands with dish soap is generally safe.
"As long as you don't have a skin condition like eczema, you can use dish soap as hand soap because the ingredients in dish soap are used in skin-safe concentrations," he told me.
But not all dish soaps are created equally and Ford did caution against using anything on your body that has high concentrations of certain essential oils because they can irritate your skin or cause other issues.
Of the five dish soaps Ford vetted for me, I was thrilled to learn that one I often use at home—Mrs. Meyer's Lavender Dish Soap—is the best option for hands because it contains glycerin, a humectant not usually found in dish soap.
Below, find some of my favorite dish soaps, including a few seasonal scents I probably shouldn't use to wash my hands. And if you have a favorite dual-purpose kitchen soap, I'd love to hear about it at emily_farris@condenast.com.
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