Homemade Dishwasher Detergent Cubes

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent Cubes

It's no secret that I love making things from scratch if I can. That goes for food, cleaners, toothpaste, laundry soap.. just about anything. We were recently having a lot of trouble finding a good dishwasher detergent that got our dishes clean because nothing else was working. We actually had to wash things by hand - but then, what's the point in having a dishwasher right??

I set out to find my own way to make some and I had a few duds before coming across this one. I tweaked it a tiny bit to fit what I was looking for and this makes a great little cube for washing! 

 

Ingredients:

1 Cup Borax

1 Cup Washing Soda

1/4 Cup Epsom Salt

Lemon Juice

First I started by mixing all the powders together. I made sure they get mixed up good because I wanted it evenly spread through all the cubes I'm going to be making. If you're not sure about the Borax, just eliminate that from the recipe, it won't harm it at all.

When everything was mixed I put a cup of the powder into a separate bowl and then poured in a little bit of lemon juice. For one cup of powder I used 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. You don't want it to be dry but you don't want it soaking wet either. 4 tablespoons made it a little wet and sticky which is exactly what I wanted.

The lemon juice will foam when it hits the powder. I mixed it all in and got it a little sticky. When I was finished with that, I started to add it to the ice cube trays. I put in a little and patted it down, then when I ran out I did another cup to mix with the lemon juice.

Now when I was all done, I set the cubes up on the window sill in the kitchen so that it would get a lot of sun and therefore dry quicker. Letting it sit overnight made it nice and hard and when I woke up in the morning I was able to flip the trays over and knock the cubs out.