Remember the Dish Soap!

Another prep item I stock pile is dish soap, particularly Dawn and Palmolive.  I remember watching a show on television approximately 10 years ago that stuck with me.  It was more of an educational type of reality TV.  It was in England.  There was a group of around 20-30 volunteers who lived in a Renaissance period camp.  The producers of this program only gave the participants the items that they would have had during the Renaissance Period. These items included the clothing, shelter, food, cooking equipment, tools, medicines, etc. The participants were finding food in the forest, hunting, and gathering water from a nearby spring.  What I remember most about this program is that the producers had to stop this experiment for a short period because many of the participants were getting horribly ill.  Some even had to leave the camp and go home and seek medical care. The reason they were getting ill:  no dish washing soap.
I found this very interesting. Maybe we, as a society, have a weaker immune system because we are accustomed to our cooking environments being sterile. In this experiment, I believe it was a combination of the wooded bowls and spoons that were being used and their innate characteristic to hold bacteria and molds within their cracks and pores, and the lack of soap to clean the bowls and spoons thoroughly.  The producers made a decisions to allow modern day soaps in the camp. They decided they had a choice of allowing the soap or stopping the program. Once soap was introduced, the participants were no longer ill.

I have since add dish washing soap to my stock pile.  Particularly Dawn and Palmolive. Since storage space is an issue with my home. I have found that these two brands seem more concentrated that other brands. I can use a lot less of these soaps and get the same results and using three times as much of cheaper brands. These soaps can also be used to clean much more if need to. You can clean you clothes, if you did not have electricity to use a washing machine, your clothes may need some softener to feel soft, but they would be clean, and smell mush better!