How to stop refilling your kitchen soap dispenser

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Our family spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and that means we tend to go through the soap in our in-sink soap dispenser every few weeks. The soap bottle under the sink is tiny and I hate refilling it as often as I need to!

I always end up spilling (i.e. wasting) soap everywhere in the process of filling it. It’s also difficult to remove and re-attach the bottle because I have to have one hand above the sink and one under the sink trying to screw it back into place.

I am happy to announce that I discovered a life hack for this particularly annoying chore.

It’s a time-saver, frustration-saver, and money-saver!

All you have to do is buy some plastic tubing and your soap life will get so much easier! It will kind of automate the soap refilling process for you more.

Let me explain.

Instead of refilling that little bottle under the sink all the time, we’re going to hook up a bulk-sized bottle of soap with some extra tubing leading from the dispenser into the big bottle! Then, rather than refilling a soap dispenser, we’ll just be replacing the bulk-sized bottle as needed.

Supplies

bulk-sized bottle of soap

We had this already because we always buy soap in bulk. If you don’t have one already, you’re going to want to buy a bulk-sized bottle of soap. The bigger, the better. Not only is this cheaper than buying little bottles, but it’s fewer refills over time because of this little life hack/DIY project. In fact, I recommend buying soap in bulk always because who wants to overspend on soap in the grand scheme of things?

plastic tubing

Important tip: In order to get the right size, unhook your soap dispenser and take it with you to your local hardware store. I did this and it was a necessity. Otherwise, you’ll be going back and forth to the store because you won’t know which size to get. The hubs and I had a little fun going through all of the plastic tubes and trying them on our soap dispenser to find the one that had the best fit. Ours needed a 5/16″ inner tubing. (Unfortunately for us, the right size only came in 20 feet, so we have lots of extra. I’ll just have to think of another project for it! It was still less than $7 and, at this time, it’s worth it to me because of the hassle it’s going to save me.)

scissors

You may need these to cut the plastic tubing to the length that you need in order to reach from the soap dispenser to the bottom of your bulk-sized bottle of soap.

tape

Any kind will do in a pinch. We used a bit of clear packing tape for this at our house. It seals the top of the soap bottle and keeps the tubing in place.

Really, the only thing we didn’t already have on hand was the plastic tubing, so this was a cheap project overall.

Steps to set up your new life hack soap dispenser

Clear a space for your bulk-sized bottle of soap under the sink

So, once you have your big ol’ bottle of soap, you’ll want to clear a space for it under the sink where it can just sit and serve up soap to your in-sink soap dispenser. I put ours in the back corner.

Attach the plastic tubing to the bottom of your in-sink soap dispenser

If yours is super long like ours, this is the time that you can measure and cut the tubing to the appropriate length to reach your soap. You will want the tubing to be long enough to go to the very bottom of the bottle.

Put the other end of the tubing into the big bottle of soap

Make sure the tubing reaches the bottom of the bottle. Then wrap a little tape around the top of the bottle and tubing to prevent the soap from drying out.

Voila! Your soap dispenser will never need to be unscrewed and refilled again!

And it won’t need any attention until the entire bulk-size bottle of soap has been used up. Then all you have to do is hook up a new one.

Ahhh, it’s the small things in life that can make such a difference!

**UPDATE** 9/7/2018: I just had to replace my bulk-sized soap bottle. Wow! I went from having to refill the soap dispenser every 3 weeks to refilling once every 6 MONTHS!!! Love love love this hack.