Dishwasher Detergent
Hello hello, if you haven’t noticed the focus point of my blogs has been about making my own products at home. Currently I’m subscribed to the Simply Earth Monthly Recipe Box and like to blog about the recipes, how I liked them, and how easy/hard they are to put together. With that being said, these monthly boxes have inspired me to start making my own products outside of the boxes. Oh I should mention, Simply Earth is a business that specializes in Essential Oils. Their focus is teaching people more about how to use essential oils safely and for everyday uses.
The reason why I have decided to make my own dishwashing detergent is because our dishwasher stopped being able to break down the pods we were using and the price of detergent has drastically gone up. I found it significantly cheaper to make my own and it works pretty darn well. The one thing I have not tried is my own rinse aid so once I do I’ll add a post about that as well.
There are many different resources out there for dishwashing detergents but what I found is that they all have similar ingredients. The ones I have tried are pods and powder. The pods did not turn out for me at all so I decided on the powder. The first few recipes I tried involved essential oils, lemon juice, or vinegar. With these liquids added to just a powder, even though its a tiny bit, it makes the powder harden in the container making it hard to use. We ended up chiseling at the powder with a knife when we had to use it. This just doesn’t work. When we tried to make the pods it took over a day to harden up enough to use as a pod. Which to me, wasn’t worth the time.
The recipe that I found works the best was simply using the powders mixed together and scooping it out with either a measuring spoon, or I ended up just keeping a medicine measuring cup inside the container. Even though there is no scent boosters or extra antibacterial/microbial properties added from the essential oils I found that the dishes still come out with a bit of citrusy scent to them due to the citric acid thats added. With our dishwasher we have a steam finish setting that I use with each load that helps remove any residue that the detergent sometimes leaves behind. I’ve tried doing this with and without a rinse aid and found that the steam finish works just as well as a rinse aid. If you do not have a steam finish setting I would recommend using a rinse aid either from the store or one you make yourself as sometimes the dishwasher doesn’t rinse enough residue away.
The ingredients for the recipe I used includes borax, washing soda, citric acid, and kosher salt. Kosher salt is very important, do not use sea salt or iodized salt as it does not work the same. If your against using borax you might as well stop here because I have yet to try a recipe that doesn’t include borax so I have no useful information for you. For those of you who are pro borax, you may end up liking this recipe.
Shopping tip: do not buy borax, washing soda, and baking soda online from Walmart or Amazon, they are severely overpriced! Buy them in store and save yourself around $15. I have no found citric acid in store but then again I did not look for it. I found the bag on amazon instead and just hoped I didn’t overpay!
In the image above I have an essential oil there. When I took this photo I did add 15 drops of essential oil to my mixture. Just this small 15 drops caused the detergent to harden inside the jar. Even with the dry ingredients alone mixed in the jar it still tends to clump slightly but nothing like when you add any kind of liquid to it. If you need to add an essential oil, or prefer it, I would add a few drops in with your mixture after added it to the dishwasher. This way you get the added benefits with out worrying about your detergent hardening.
Dishwashing Detergent Powder Recipe
Dishwashing detergent powder is equal parts of each ingredient. Make it in as big or small of batches as you prefer. Note that this recipe will get hard the longer it sits so I do not recommend making it in too big of batches. For myself, I only added 1 cup of each to my batch and it is holding up nicely. Its been 2.5 weeks since I made my current batch and it has not hardened, I have only used about half of it so far.
Ingredients:
1 part Borax
1 part Washing Soda
1 part Citric Acid
1 part Kosher Salt
Instructions:
Combine ingredients together in a bowl and mix well. Use 1-2 tablespoons per load of dishes adding mixture into dishwasher detergent dispenser. Store in an airtight container.
Ingredient Breakdown
Washing Soda
Washing Soda
Washing soda is composed of two ingredients, sodium carbonate and water. What it does is cleans, freshens, and deodorizes your dishes. This little powerhouse is used in many different cleaning recipes as its very versatile. I also used this ingredient in my homemade laundry detergent. Here are a couple of links for some more information:
Borax
Borax is a mineral called Sodium Tetraborate that is made up of sodium, oxygen, and boron. Borax is a natural ingredients that I mined here in the US. Similarly to Washing Soda, it has many great uses around the house as a cleaning agent and even repels bugs. When it comes to your dishes, borax helps clean, deodorize, and helps to remove the water stains. Even though it is a natural ingredient it is still toxic if ingested so be careful. Here are a few websites with more information:
Citric Acid
Citric acid is another one of those ingredients that is super versatile. It is used as a preservative, a PH balancer, and added to food similarly to vinegar and lemon juice but doesn’t add their flavor profiles to it. On the other end, it also is great at breaking down food particles on your food and cleaning up bacteria and fungus as well. Here are a few websites for more information:
Kosher Salt
So I have tried to look up good resources on why specifically using kosher salt is better than iodized but honestly I don’t think it matters as I found nothing. What I do know is that they both are water softeners and kosher is generally a bit more abrasive so it cant help scrub your dishes up nicely. Its main use of course is to act as a scrubber but if you happen to have hard water it will soften it up and help prevent water spots. Please note, do not use Himalayan sea salt or sea salt as this is an altogether different type of salt and will cause your water to harden.
Essential Oils
As far as essential oils go there are various different ones that you can use in your dishwasher. Any citrus fruits like lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit are great for deodorizing and giving your dishes that fresh scent. But other oils like fir needle, lavender, tea tree, rosemary, thyme, and neroli are all great to use in your dishwasher as well. Ive added images and links below to different essential oils that you could use in your dishwasher. Unexpectedly Domestic also has a great article about essential oils for cleaning.
Other dishwashing ideas
Dishwasher Tabs
If you decide that you do not like making your own or this recipe does not work well for you an alternative would be Simply Earths Dishwasher tabs. They do come wrapped in a plastic that is safe for your dishwasher. It’s free of parabens and SLS and made with pure and safe ingredients. I had one of these in last months recipe box that was meant to be used for cleaning the oven but I tested it in our dishwasher instead and it worked amazing.
Swedish Dish Cloth
This isn’t for your dishwasher but it is dishwasher safe! This dishcloth is biodegradable won’t stink like your old fabric dishcloths. To wash it you can either throw it in your dishwasher or in your washing machine. When you’ve had enough of it you simply cut it up and toss it in with your recycling.
