Homemade Dishwasher Detergent
When owning you own a dishwasher you will come across the problem of buying cleaning and enhancing products such as tablets or rinse aid. As you may already be aware, buying rinse aid, tablets, salt and cleaner can be costly especially if you require buying all 4 products. However maintaining a well operational dishwasher you will require at least 3 of those 4 products as rinse aid is more to enhance the cleaning by removing streaks. You may be tempted to skip adding salt or tablets when you run out, however, in doing this you can create lime scale or not get good results which you effectively do not want. This is why the cleanliness and upkeep of any dishwasher is a vital factor.
A good way of avoiding to skip adding detergent is by making your own homemade dishwasher detergent. Of course this costs you time in looking out to buy the products as well as making the detergent, but knowing the best way to do this actually does not take long to do while saving you money and still getting good results from your dishwasher. It is in fact that making homemade dishwasher detergent is more eco-friendly then a lot of branded detergents! The branded detergents will have many extra chemicals which are all added to make a superior detergent which sometimes is going an extra mile too far in our opinion. If you have bought detergents in the past or still do think about the amount of plastic bottles and non-environment friendly packaged products you have had to throw away. With homemade detergent you will decrease that drastically.
Ingredients in Making Homemade Dishwasher Detergent
So getting onto the ingredients used to make the detergent, there are 4 main ingredients that you will require to make this detergent recipe. They are described below with relating links(Image Links) if you choose to purchase them or not. Alternatively you can check out your local stores to see if they have them in stock.
Borax – Natural mineral and a salt
Kosher Salt – Large grain salt, however you can use normal salt though Kosher is known to be more effective.
Washing Soda – Good for cutting through grease.
Citric Acid – Extract from citric fruits that helps give a more fresh smell, does not have to be used.
All of these ingredients we are using to make cleaning powder and even if they do say they are natural they should not be inhaled or ingested. Some are actually used in recipes and food but we recommend you do not inhale or ingest. Also always keep out of reach of children and pets like you would with all other chemicals and cleaning products!
Equipment
As far as the equipment goes for making the recipe you do not need much. What you will need is measuring cups or spoons, a bowl or container big enough to fit the mixture.
Creating the Detergent
The method of creating the recipe is all pretty much straight forward. It simply consists of measuring each ingredient, placing them into a container and mixing them all up together. So the measurements:
Borax – 1 cup
Washing Soda – 1 cup
Kosher Salt – 1/4 of a cup
Citric Acid – 1/8 of a cup
Add all of the measurements into a bowl and mix them together, ideally just place them straight into the bowl you will keep the mixture in. And before you know it you have made your very own homemade dishwasher detergent!
When using the detergent simply put one tablespoon of the mixture into the tablet comportment where you would insert pre-made dishwasher tablets.
Items to Point Out
Now before you go and make the recipe there are something to mention before you make it:
Firstly there are many similar recipes for this detergent and all can actually be working recipes that have probably worked for at least one person out there. However you need to experiment for yourself! If you try this recipe and it works for you a few times then great keep at it and don’t change it unless you think you can make it better.
Secondly problems can occur because everyone is using with different dishwashers that all may be using different water types! Depending on your area you may have soft water or hard water in which may need the recipe to be adjusted slightly. In the video below you will see a very similar recipe which actually uses baking soda also…this is to combat the hard water source that they have. So maybe that recipe will work better. Apart from water this recipe may just not work for you so try adjusting it on putting a little more research on the homemade dishwasher detergent.
Thirdly the ingredients can be substituted like the salt mentioned earlier but also the citric acid can be replaced a non sweetened drink mix such as lemonade. Now if you wish to have more fragrance to the dishwasher you can use essential oils which will give a nice smell to your dishwasher but this is optional so experiment!
Fourthly to remind you that even though these ingredients may say they are all natural they do contain some negative points when ingesting or inhaling whether they be very minimal negatives or not and always keep out of reach of children!
Similar recipe: