The frugal housekeeper is always on the lookout for ways to cut household costs, and still get their chores done with efficiency. Some people have come up with innovative ways to substitute their own "formulas" for liquid dish soap.

First, bars of laundry soap are often much cheaper than dish soap. You can take a bar of the soap and pare it into curls, place it in a pot or plastic container, and cover with hot water. Let set overnight, then pour the whole thing in a blender and whip it until you have a thick liquid. How much you can water it down, depends largely on how good the soap was to start with. So once you have your liquidized bar of soap, add 1/4 cup of water at a time, and test it under running water for its foaming properties. Stop diluting when you lose the foam.

You can attempt this with powdered laundry detergents, but the result is not as lasting, and tends to lose its foaming power.

Many people contend that commercial liquid dish soaps are far too concentrated, and advocate cutting them with up to four parts water to one part soap, which would make your bottle last longer. When the soap emulsifies and spreads out over the dishwater surface, you're not as likely to get clumps of suds and soap in a dish, requiring extensive rinsing.