How to Make Copycat Dawn Powerwash

I had seen Dawn Powerwash on a TV commercial and thought it sounded like a pretty good product. However, I’m trying to down-size the number of cleaning supplies I have on hand at home, so I didn’t think too much more about it. That is until I saw it sitting on the grocer shelf as I was reaching for my regular Dawn dish soap. I figured what the heck, I’d give it a try….in spite of the fact it is almost $5 for 16 ounces.

Once I got it home and started using it, I realized this is almost a miracle product for cleaning greasy, stuck on food. I loved it! It did everything the commercial said it would! Is there anything Dawn can’t do in the cleaning world?

Now there are just two of us and we aren’t doing a tremendous amount of cooking due to the type of diet we are on, but I realized after a few days that this new product could potentially get pretty expensive for a dish soap product. After just a few days, I had already used a quarter of it. Then I started only using it on the pans and baking sheets, and it did end up lasting me about a month.

Fast forward to making a list for our next shopping trip….I did put the Dawn Powerwash on the list, but I also decided to see if I could make a copycat version. I use small regular spray bottles for a number of different cleaning applications (some with Dawn), so I knew regular spray bottles didn’t produce the same foaminess. The secret was the kind of spray bottle that Dawn Powerwash comes in.

I did find a set of two nice simple looking white foaming spray bottles on Amazon for $10.99, but I just reused my empty bottle. Super convenient because I could buy it right then and not have to wait on having it shipped to me.

Copycat Dawn Powerwash

The top of the Dawn Powerwash bottle only turns a quarter turn to remove it. When you put the sprayer back on, make sure it clicks to lock it in place.

Take your empty 16 ounce Powerwash bottle and pour about an inch of Dawn dish soap in the bottle. It’s about 1/4 cup, if you want to actually measure it. But seriously, there is no need to. I then added about a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol. Now this is the tricky part, very slowly add water to fill the bottle. If you fill it too fast, the soap solution will make a LOT of bubbles. If that happens, just let the bottle sit for awhile until the bubbles break up. Once the bottle is full, put the lid on and gently swirl to combine the dish soap and water. I think if you added the water first, then the dish soap, it wouldn’t foam up so much in the bottle. The problem doing it that way, is you’d have to measure out 13 ounces of water in the bottle first, then add the alcohol, and top it off with the dawn dish soap.

This photo below shows the DIY spray on the left and the store-bought Dawn Powerwash on the right.

Costs of DIY Dawn Powerwash

I paid $4.94 for the 16 ounce bottle of Dawn Powerwash at Walmart. That’s about the same price as buying one of the empty bottles above. A 40 ounce bottle of Dawn Ultra dish soap also costs $4.94, which breaks down to 12¢ an ounce. I use 2 ounces (1/4 cup) of dish soap to make a 16 ounce bottle, so that costs 24¢. The alcohol costs about 3¢ per tablespoon.

27¢ versus $4.94 . . . yep, that’s a pretty amazing deal!

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