A while a go I jumped on the DIY Laundry Soap bandwagon and I love it. Its easy, quick and my close are just has clean as they always were AND I’m using less chemicals in my house. I love that!
I also had purchased all of the ingredients to make a batch of the dishwasher detergent/soap, but I was so darn skeptical about it that it just took me to the actual day that I ran out of detergent to finally put it together to try it out. I don’t know, it just seemed like it wouldn’t get my dishes clean. I am a confessed non-pre-rinser, and for a season, my husband actually banned me from loading the dishwasher. He said, there is clean, then there is “Kaylee Clean”, which means…meh, clean-ish. I have to say, I would much rather invest my $$ in a dishwasher that gets the job done and invest my precious time doing something else besides pre-rinsing dishes!
DIY DISHWASHING DETERGENT REVIEW: I wanted to see how this homemade dishwasher detergent panned out before I claimed its fame and I can say…I’m ready to make another batch and it works BETTER than the Cascade, Sun, Finish or any of the generic cheap brands. I’m telling you, from a non pre-rinse person, its pretty amazing stuff!!! I’m sold.
Ok, onto my new favorite dishwasher detergent/soap:
Ingredients:
3 cups washing soda– different than baking soda –found in the laundry section
1 and 1/2 cup salt
Lemi-Shine ( 12 ounce bottle) This makes your dishsoap smell lovely!
3 Cups Borax
All you need to do is mix these ingredients together and there you have it! Try not to inhale while mixing!
WHAT NOT TO DO: AKA, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!!!
–DON’T put your soap into a mason jar!! I split my soap up and put some into 2 containers, one was a wide mouth mason jar, because what is cuter than dishwasher detergent in a mason jar??? -BAD IDEA!!! After the 2nd or 3rd time using it, it got very stuck together and I needed to break it apart with a knife (**envision stabbing motion here!) and got my adrenaline flowing every time I did a load of dishes. Not how I want to start my day. :/
–DON’T use a wet spoon from the sink to get your detergent from your container to the dishwasher! I did this a few times (because these spoons also need to get clean, right??) and I think it contributed to the caking issue (**and hence the stabbing motion). Find a small plastic spoon that you can just leave in the container and use it every time and put it back into the container so its there when you need it next time! 🙂
What worked:
-DO USE A SHORT WIDE CONTAINER I put the rest of the detergent in a short wide toss plastic container that worked so much better! I’m still working on the ingredients not caking together, but it was much easier to break apart the soap when I did need to.