I am talking about liquid dish soap like Dawn

I realize Lye soap can be made.

what did the 1880s housewife use to clean their dishes??

we have lost so much of the 1880s daily living practices. we take things like Dawn for granted

Thanks

Mud. Seriously. A good mud bath. Let mud dry and scrape it off.  It will pull off dead skin and clean you of grease and stuff. Then normal water to get cleaner.  Thats how nature takes care of the problem anyways..

Remember, the key to soap and anything else like it is the ability to dry the top layer of skin so you can shed off the dead layer of skin, which leaves a nice clean new skin underneath.  Also, anti bacterial hand cleaner only works because it dries out any bacteria and kills it. Fast drying is key.

Dried corn cobs used to be used as a scrubber to achieve that affect.

Something tells me you didn't read the OP... it's not like it was a wall of words, it was short, concise, and asked a question unrelated to the answer you gave...

This is my tag bc I'm also interested...

Out west we use sand and a pine cone and it works great.
Long term SHTF just do the math and buy it now I have 20 years worth. Go to a restaurant supply and get the concentrated versions.
I also have a few hundred gallons of coconut oil that will convert to soap if it goes bad before eating.

You use sand and pine-cones for dishes?

The 20 yr supply is my current approach, although I don't have that much. I can't recall the last time I bought dish soap... There was that one time I got commercial Palmolive gallons for $3 each and I ended up with about 15 gallons... still got quite a bit left... but wish I could find a deal like that again.

Your not my supervisor

I take it your supervisor routinely points out your mistakes?

I'll stop now because this isn't GD, but you've got a grammar mistake in there ^^^

We I was young I took a summer 6 week minimalist backpacking and camping class. We set up solar stills and dew condensers to replenish our campsite water supply so we didn't have to carry/haul more. Fine sand with a stick with a charred end cleaned pots, pans and plate just fine. They charr the stick to burn off any sap and kill any insect eggs.

We would roast pine cones in the fire - as some types won't release the seeds otherwise.

Never sit on fallen rotting logs, the decay attracts bugs, the bugs attract Scorpions, seems every log would have about a half dozen.

ashes + fat on dishes = clean dishes (use this camping)
sand or brick dust for scrubbing
vinegar + ashes to clean pot

vineger + salt is still the best way to clean copper(i still use this method)

I prefer to scrub with silt, you have to get the right consistency. Too sandy and it will remove too much skin, avoid stinky (rotten leaf) bottom mud.

I only use it to clean hands, not the face.

I have to say that one of reasons for choosing a location with low humidity and lots of sand was for the sanitary aspect.
When I lived in the east I had to bathe twice a day to get the sweat off and feel comfortable out west backpacking I could go for a week and still sleep comfortable.

In Florida, Palmetto root can be used as soap.  It suds up too.

So I guess I move to Florida for Palmetto root or find some mud if I run out.

Think I will stock up on more dawn Costco has it on sale ever now and again. Thanks

"I think a few points of chemical background may help understanding the historical solutions to the dishwashing question.

With the exception of burnt residue (for which mechanical/abrasive treatment is most efficient), dish washing is about cleaning carbohydrates (starch/sugar), lipids (oil, grease) and protein from the dishes.

The carbohydrates are easiest: they are readily dissolved or emulsified by plain water, so no problem at all.
To get rid of the lipids, you can use an emulsifier (that term really just means any substance that helps form/keep lipid droplets in water). Soaps can do this, but also e.g. lecithin (remember reading: emulsifier soy lecitin - see the soybean powder in the comment. Although I doubt that historically edible substances were used much for dish washing - but some types of food already contain sufficient emulsifier so no additional emulsifier is needed for dish washing).
In alkaline/basic condiditons, fats (triglycerides) hydrolyze into glycerol and fatty acids which are deprotonated (anions) in the alkaline solution and thus have a hydrophilic end. These fatty acid anions act as emulsifier, so hydrolysis of a small part of the lipids is sufficient for dish washing.

Now, proteins that stick to the dish because they are denatured by heat (frying, baking - cooking also leads to heat denaturation, but due to being in water it doesn't stick to the dish as much) are the hardest problem for dishwashing. However, you can hydrolyze also these (for practical dishwashing: sufficiently to get the remainder off mechanically). Proteins hydrolyze easily in alkaline/basic conditions, but also in acidic conditions. Acidic hydrolysis is typically slower, though. A modern alternative is using enzymes.

Thus bases do help tremendously with dish washing. Two alkaline substances that have been around for very long time are

ashes (and their lye)
Wikipedia says about lye soap:

The ancient use of lye for soap-making and as a detergent is the origin of the English word, deriving from Proto-Germanic *laugo and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *leue-, "to wash." Relatives in other Germanic languages, besides their words for lye, include the Scandinavian languages' words for Saturday (laugardagur, lördag, lørdag), meaning "washing day".

and lime

Plaster: There is archeological evidence that Pre-Pottery Neolithic B humans used limestone-based plaster for flooring and other uses.[12][13][14] Such Lime-ash floor remained in use until the late nineteenth century.

Lime (CaO) is not so good for dish washing, because its soaps [see below] are unsoluble in water, they form scum. This is why with hard water (containing much Ca²?) much more soap is needed than with soft water.

washing soda (Na2CO3) according to Wiki on dishwashing liquid was used before the modern dishwashing detergents were invented. It is the main component of natron, which was produced (among other uses also for washing and soap production) in ancient egypt.
Sodium carbonate became cheap with the invention of first Le Blanc and then the Solvay process, so we're talking 19th century here.

Soaps are the salts of fatty acids. They are produced by hydrolyzing fat in alkaline (NaOH or KOH) solution, e.g. lye from ash. For cleaning purposes, sodium (Na) and potassium (K) soaps are used. Being a salt of a strong base (KOH, NaOH) and a weak acid, they still react basic, so for dish washing they also have the property of inducing hydrolysis of protein in addition to being emulsifier for lipids.

Others have already given citations of ancient (Mesopotamia, Egypt etc.) knowledge of soap. Let me add that until sodium carbonate became a cheap industrial product, soap was a luxury article rather than a commodity (Ullmann's encyclopedia of industrial chemistry on Soap). From that I'd guess that the every-day dish washing was not done with anything so fancy*.

Also, not so ancient history from middle Europe (great-grandma's time, anecdata): Cast iron pans were wiped, but removing grease/fat was not even intended. If they were washed to remove grease, they were greased again immediately after to prevent rusting. This meant a taste to everything that we'd nowaday refuse as rancid but which was normal in former times (compare haut-goût). Again, burnt residue was and still is best removed with mechanical means: abrasives such as sand or steel wool.
Wooden plates were rinsed but also probably not washed to be totally grease-free. (Other cultures use one-way articles like banana leaves). In general, there was more cooking (and in general more soup/stew/porridge types of food) and less frying. And cooking pots are comparably easy to clean without (much) detergent if you start immediately or let them soak."

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/45386/how-did-people-wash-dishes-before-dish-detergent

Agave.  Dig it up.  The bulb lathers well.  Don't get poked.  We have this type:

How to wash dishes without soap – a lesson from history

Try making your own.  There are methods and instructions.  like most else, with a little practice, one can make hard soaps and liquid soaps.  Just like old times.  Knowing how to do things and make things goes a long way when times go hard.  Just saying ................

Sand.  Easily replentished, kill any critters within by "cooking" the sand over a fire in the pan you want to clean.

Will allow debris to be scrubbed out, then boil water in pan to sterilize.

We did this in Scouts for several years, and never had any ill effects.

Use the WHITE ashes from a wood fire to make a paste. Then take a bundle of straw or dry grass and twist it into a knot to make a scouring pad. Dab the pad into your paste of ashes and scrub your mess kit clean. It cleans SS shiny bright and dissolves grease and burnt on stuff. In many places in the World it is what housewives use everyday.

The best field expedient "dish soap" I have ever used.

Sand and water. It exfoliates the skin

Here in Az where you cant trust untreated water and water means everything we use sand from the ground or creek/wash beds to clean pots/pans/dishes.  It works really well.