Do you ever substitute one product type for another?

I do this all the time. Recipes have always been guidelines more than hard rules. There are a million examples…Just yesterday, I made rum cake and substituted powdered ginger for candied, for example. Sometimes I use lotion instead of shaving cream. Broth for water is probably a popular one. Unsweetened chocolate and sugar for semi-sweet. Soap for shampoo for laundry detergent. Sea water for potable water when camping. Ribbons for belts.

Occasionally, I substitute jalapenos instead of grape jelly. They are basically the same.

My wife does this all the time in cooking.

When money’s tight, shampoo/conditioner can double as shaving cream and body wash.

Cornstarch for baby powder. Windex and a rag for Swiffer floor cleaning supplies.

I’ve done this all my life. I’ve quit using Swiffer- it’s just sticky. I’m using plain water with splash of vinegar.

I’ve never heard of laundry detergent in the dishwasher. mmm, those plates will smell like a fresh spring afternoon! Do you hang them up to dry on a clothesline afterwards? For the full effect.

I’ve used shampoo as soap, and vice versa, or for shaving cream. And I always use the dish soap as hand soap, if I’m washing my hands in the kitchen.
At the moment I can’t think of any good examples.

I tried using whipped cream for shaving cream this morning.

Didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but tasted delicious!

Shaving cream is weird to me. Soap and water works fine. Most store-bought cleaning products can be replaced with really cheap DIY concoctions.

A typical example is glass cleaner.
1 cup distilled white vinegar
2 cups water
½ tsp dish soap
10–15 drops essential oil
Spray Bottle

Lots more:

http://www.jollymom.com/2009/01/make-something-monday.html

http://thenewnew.blogspot.com/2008/04/diy-green-cleaning-products.html

http://www.doityourself.com/stry/makecleansupply

Ummm I have a hard time with the laundry detergent in the dishwasher. You would get foam coming out of the door. All dish detergents are defoamed whereas laundry detergents have foamers added. The reason is that dish soap mixing with the greases in your dish machine tends to build more soap through saponification and thusly leading to large amounts of foam. Either your dish washer locks very, very tight or you wash all of your dishes before putting them in your dishwasher.

I’ve done laundry detergent in the dishwasher. I didn’t have a bunch of foam or any problem. Of course I’ve been broke all my life so I wouldn’t have filled the container.

I use dishwashing liquid as hand soap.. Same stuff but cheaper by the gallon.

When I was a kid mother used diluted fabric softener on our hair because it was cheaper than conditioner. I’ve replaced some cleaning products with vinegar. I use vinegar to sanitize the laundry where I used to use ammonia.

@thriftymaid

Oh that’s ripe. Fabric softener for hair conditioner… who knew?

@TheLoneMonk I imagine they used HE detergent.

yup